


City

by Steveuschrist



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Bruce Wayne, Blood, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Break Up, Bruce Wayne Has Trust Issues, Bruce Wayne is Batman, Bruce and Jeremiah are bffs, Bruce has no patience for mere mortals, Canon-Typical Violence, Coming Out, Crime Fighting, Crimes & Criminals, Cue sneak music, Developing Relationship, Don't worry this is just momentary batcat, Eye Gouging, Eye Trauma, Fear, Fear Discovery, Gun Violence, Guns, Gunshot Wounds, I can't avoid this i'm sorry, Jerome Valeska Lives, Jerome Valeska is the Joker, Mild Blood, Past Relationship(s), Past Selina Kyle/Bruce Wayne, Permanent Injury, Phobias, Pining, Platonic Relationships, Protective Bruce Wayne, Scarecrow's Fear Toxin (DCU), Self-Doubt, Sexuality Crisis, Soft Jeremiah Valeska, Tags Contain Spoilers, Trust, Trust me it'll make sense, Vigilantism, i'm just doing this to be safe, i'm sorry this isn't a continuation of the other story, it'll start getting gay i swear, it's a totally new one because i can't do names cuz i'm a dumb, it's fine, oh boy here we go - Freeform, warning from here down
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2020-11-24 02:41:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 47,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20900303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steveuschrist/pseuds/Steveuschrist
Summary: Following the months of Bruce's 18th birthday, he becomes dedicated to protecting Gotham and saving people. As soon as the Rogues start to make their grand returns to Gotham, he quickly realizes that he's falling out of love with Selina, and in love with someone else.





	1. Chapter 1

Bruce’s lips turned up at the corners as he finished his speech. The crowd of well-dressed men and women before him clapped politely as his words rang in the air, and it was once again difficult to tell if they even knew what they were clapping at.

He stepped off of the stage and adjusted his tie, deciding to attempt a casual beeline for the bar so he could grab some water, but he was cut off by a call of his name. “Mr. Wayne!”

_ God, can I get a damn drink?  _ Bruce turned and smiled at the person who approached him. “Ah, Mrs. Smith!” 

  
“Sarah, Mr. Wayne,  _ Sarah _ .” She laughed softly and Bruce gave her another small smile in return. 

He shook her hand. “Bruce, then. I insist.” He really didn’t. 

“I just thought your speech was rather… inspiring. The plans for new housing developments, trying to revamp Arkham, or even possibly putting in a new hospital.. Just wonderful, Bruce. Absolutely wonderful.” 

He ducked his head a little bit. “Thank you, I appreciate it. I’m so glad that so many people are helping me back it. I really want to change Gotham for the better.” 

Sarah looked like she was about to say something else, but then someone called her name from a small crowd. She gave Bruce an apologetic smile. “Thank you again, Bruce.”

He turned and resumed his beeline for the bar. He felt like the Sahara Desert, he was almost certain that he broke a sweat up on stage. He finally made it to the empty bar and asked for a glass of water. Honestly, he could’ve asked for straight alcohol and the bartender probably would’ve given it to him without a second thought, well knowing his age, but Bruce didn’t want to have anything to do with alcohol for a long time. 

He downed the glass of water and the bartender refilled it without a second thought. He just put the glass up to his lips when he heard a very familiar voice say his name softly. This time, his heart soared just a tiny bit. He pulled the glass away and looked over to his left. A genuine smile crossed his face. “Jeremiah!” 

The redhead pushed up his glasses and gave Bruce a tiny smile. He slowly leaned against the bar, hands fidgeting. “I.. um.. Hi.” 

“I didn’t think that you’d make it.” Bruce said, standing up just a little straighter. Jeremiah shrugged and glanced between his hands and Bruce. 

“Neither did I. You made a really great speech up there, Bruce.” The compliment made Bruce flush. 

“Do you want something to drink?” He sipped his water, hoping it would block his cheeks from Jeremiah’s view. 

“Oh, sure-”

“He’ll take a whiskey, put it on my tab.” Wait.. since when did Bruce internalize that Jeremiah liked whiskey? He glanced over to Jeremiah, who stood there, blinking like he was in shock. The bartender placed the glass in front of Jeremiah, and he took it up, looking over at Bruce. 

“..Thanks, Bruce.”

Bruce’s brain searched furiously for a way to steer this awkward moment into something far less so. Jeremiah had  _ never  _ come to one of his events like this, which is why he was so surprised and caught off-guard. “It’s really good to see that you’re getting out, honestly.” 

“Hah, says the guy who I rarely see at work anymore.” Jeremiah poked fun at him, a sly grin crossing his face. 

“Hey, if I can do paperwork at home, I’m going to do paperwork at home.” Bruce pointed out, because that was true. 

“Yeah, they’re trying to keep you there because they know that you’re smarter than all of them combined and will overturn the company in two seconds flat if they give you any breathing room.” Jeremiah shook his head and sipped his whiskey again. “Seriously, Bruce, the company is better off without half of the board. They’re holding you back.” 

Bruce made a slight motion with his head and pushed off of the bar, slowly strolling away from it. Jeremiah followed him, their shoulders almost brushing. “I know, but I can’t just fire them. I need to wait it out, get a new group in who shares my vision-  _ our  _ vision.” He and Jeremiah collaborated for hours, particularly on the housing projects, after all. 

Bruce’s eyes wandered over to the small clumps of people socializing, certainly at least one or two of them were looking for him. Not that he had any interest in talking to anyone aside from Jeremiah. 

“You look like you need some sleep.” Jeremiah said suddenly, brows coming together as he gazed at Bruce. 

The ravenette looked away from him, eyes going to the water in his glass. “Don’t we all?” 

“ _ Bruce _ .” 

He lifted his eyes back to Jeremiah as the redhead put a hand on his shoulder. “Please. Go home. Get some sleep. I can’t have my best friend and boss trying to work out Gotham’s issues with a tired mind.” 

Bruce slowly took a deep breath. “J, I really appreciate you looking out for me, but tonight.. I honestly can’t. Selina and I are going out to dinner.”

The look on Jeremiah’s face shifted slightly as Broke spoke. His face seemed to fall, his grip on his glass tightened just a little. “...I see.”

Bruce glanced down at his watch, it reminded him of the time. “Speaking of which, I should get going. I’m sorry, Jeremiah. The speech, the event, I just-” 

“You got caught up in the moment, I understand, Bruce.” His lips turned up just a tiny bit at the corners. “I’ll see you tomorrow, maybe?” 

Bruce nodded sincerely. “Yes,  _ definitely _ , I will see you tomorrow. Goodnight, Jeremiah.” He turned away and quickly returned to the bar to put his glass up on it. He threw a 10 down and left the room as swiftly as he could. He glanced back just before slipping out the door, eyes finding red hair and a dark suit. He was alone in the corner of the room, sipping his whiskey. Bruce left before he could convince himself to rejoin him. 

***

“So, how was your fancy fundraiser thing?” Selina asked from across the table, looking over at him as she popped some steak into her mouth. A curl landed in her eyes and she brushed it aside. 

“Oh, it was fine. I don’t think I made  _ too  _ much of a fool of myself.” He admitted shyly, and she shook her head, grinning. 

“Only  _ you _ could talk in front of a bunch of older rich people and worry about looking like an idiot.”

“Well, you know.. It’s an important event. I rewrote the speech so many times. I had to convince more people and get them on board without revealing  _ too  _ much.” 

She pointed her fork at him. “Because you know that they’re a bunch of old farts who don’t  _ really  _ care about people like me.”

He huffed softly. “Selina, that isn’t what-”

“No, no, I get it. I’m not blaming  _ you _ , I’m just saying that you know how to play your cards right to raise more money for your cause.” She took another bite of steak. “You know how the game works, you’re only playing by the rules to get a place at the table.” 

“I wish it were just as easy as that.” He glanced between his food and her. She was wearing a black dress that hung off of her shoulders, part of her hair was clipped up and away from her face. Bruce couldn’t deny that she was pretty, she always was. But he’d started to truly notice something in her eyes that he hadn’t noticed before. Maybe he had been blind due to infatuation, he didn’t know her before he started puberty, after all. However, now that he was older, now that they’d seriously decided to try to be a ‘thing’, he saw more and more of…  _ something _ . 

“Don’t worry, half of them will be dead in the next decade. You won’t have to worry for long, especially because you’ll be older and they’ll take you more seriously.” She smirked and stirred her Shirley Temple. “Honestly, I don’t know how you stand any of them.” 

“Sometimes I don’t, either.” 

***

Bruce took the check from the waiter and filled out the blanks on the receipts, chicken scratch appearing on the bright paper in black ink as he wrote. He tucked his card and his receipt into his wallet, placing the pen on the table. Selina slurped down the rest of her Shirley Temple, and he stood and held out his hand to her. She honestly looked a bit apprehensive, but she took his hand and stood with him. He led her out of the dim restaurant, pulling the door open and holding it for her. A ghost of a smile came to her face as she passed him and he closely followed her behind. 

This time she took his hand, almost holding it discreetly as they walked slowly down the sidewalk together. They reached his car and she turned to him as they stood next to it. 

“So.. I guess I’ll see you around?” Bruce shrugged. “Unless you want me to drive you to your place.” She had a ‘place’ now, an apartment that Bruce insisted on her living in after she turned down his offer for her to just live in the manor with him. He knew that she wasn’t a fan of it, they’d reached a compromise of her paying her own rent despite Bruce’s wishes. He knew where the money was coming from. 

“Actually…” She suddenly took a step towards him, her hand coming up to rub his arm. Their height difference was apparent now because she was wearing flats. Bruce was roughly six foot, and the top of Selina’s head came up right under his chin. Her hand slid over to his chest. “Maybe.. I could come back to  _ your  _ place.” 

Bruce swallowed thickly, a small heat rising in his cheeks as he looked down at her. “I..” He searched her face, he could tell that she was being genuine. “I really need to.. come back out here into the city..” 

She let out a huff, but she smiled at him anyway. She dropped her voice down, not like anyone was on the street to hear them. “Bruce.. Gotham can survive without you for one night. You don’t  _ need _ to protect it.” She sighed, this time Bruce knew she was frustrated. “It’s not  _ your  _ job, that falls on the cops. Or at least, it’s  _ supposed  _ to.”

Bruce took her hand, shaking his head. “I missed last night, and the night before that. I’ve woken up to news of crimes that I could’ve stopped-”

“Bruce, it’s not your responsibility!” Her brows came together a bit. “You’re-  _ we’re _ \- young, we have  _ needs _ . You shouldn’t be running away from your own wants to protect the city!” Her shoulders dropped, and her eyes fell to where their hands met. “..Just.. I’m ready. And if you’re not then you can just  _ say  _ that, you don’t need to keep dancing around me. I understand.”

Her words hung in the air. Bruce shifted a bit awkwardly on his feet. “..Protecting the city is really important to me-” 

“More important than us?” She pulled her hand away from his grasp.

Bruce reached out for her hand again. “Selina-”

She stepped away from him, all he saw was hurt in her eyes. “We both agreed that we would try this  _ together _ . That we would really try, Bruce. Now I’ve gotten the apartment, I’ve gone out on dates with you, I’ve kissed you, I’ve been to a boring event with you.. I understand if you’re not ready to be more..  _ with  _ me, but I’ve tried to give a lot to this relationship! And you’re hardly giving me anything! This can’t be one-sided Bruce, you know it can’t.” 

He searched for any words to say but found none. It was true, he wasn’t ready to be more intimate with her. He wasn’t even sure if she was really ready. They didn’t do intimate things. They kissed, but Bruce had only made out with her a few times. She just didn’t seem to ever really  _ want  _ to show him affection. “You’re right. I’m not ready. And I honestly can’t tell you right now when I will be.” 

“...Thank you- for  _ actually  _ being honest with me.” She looked up at him, looking at least a little less mad. “But Bruce, you have to remember… we’re not kids anymore. Things are going to start flying by us. We can’t miss our chance to do things together, not when we’ve already missed so much.” She stood up on her tip-toes and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. “Take your time, but remember, we’re going to need to keep moving forward for this to work. I’ll see you around, alright? I don’t need a ride.” 

He nodded. “Yeah, I’ll see you, Selina. Have a good night.” 

***

“Wait, what happened to your knuckles?”

Bruce looked up from the blueprints he was examining, eyes falling upon Jeremiah who was suddenly standing next to him. He turned his hand over, then instinctually brought it to his chest so Jeremiah couldn’t see it as clearly. He tried to pull his shirt sleeve over it, but it was already too short on his lanky arms. “Boxing, actually. For working out. My gloves are in bad condition, I’ve been meaning to get a new pair.” 

Jeremiah gave him a look that told Bruce that he wasn’t entirely convinced, however he just sighed softly. “They just look like they hurt, that’s all. I want to make sure you’re alright.” 

Bruce held out his hands into the lighting of Jeremiah’s office in the bunker. His first two knuckles on both hands were the ones that were bruised the worst, and his left hand was doing better than his right. Jeremiah’s hand came up, and he looked as if he wanted to take Bruce’s hand. The younger spoke up. “They hurt last night, but I put ice on them.” 

Jeremiah frowned, eyes going back to Bruce’s face. “Last night? I thought you were at dinner with Selina.” 

“Well, I was only with her for a couple hours, and she didn’t come home with me. I came home, had a lot of anxiety from the event last night..” Bruce shrugged and set his hands back down on the table. “I needed to burn off some nervous energy, clear my head before I could sleep.” 

Jeremiah stepped back over to where he was sketching some designs. “I hear that.” He sat down on his table and picked up his notebook and pencil. 

“Yeah, except for you, clearing your head before you sleep probably involves complex mechanical engineering equations.” Bruce couldn’t help but giggle to himself, especially after the face that Jeremiah made. 

“Ha ha, very funny, Bruce. But.. I actually do jigsaw puzzles.” He wasn’t meeting Bruce’s gaze when he spoke, as if he were embarrassed. 

Bruce sat back in his chair. “That sounds..  _ really  _ relaxing, actually.” How many hours has he spent playing chess to get the same effect? Though, he switched to physical workouts for many reasons. 

“It is, it’s almost therapeutic, I guess. It’s really easy to fall into a state of focus. My mind just focuses in on finding what will go where, or finding a specific piece. Before I know it I’m tired and, and least for a while, I’m not as anxious as I usually am.”

“Well, now I know what to get you for your birthday and Christmas.” Bruce saw Jeremiah’s shoulders shake a little from gentle laughter as he focused back on his sketches. 

The office was dead for a few minutes as they worked. Bruce could only hear Jeremiah’s pencil scratches and when he erased a line or two. The redhead spoke just as Bruce finished double-checking the blueprints. He stood to roll it up and Jeremiah looked over at him. “..I’m sorry about Selina.” 

Bruce glanced over to him. “How come?”

“I know that you two are.. in a bit of a spot.” He tapped his paper with his pencil. 

Bruce shrugged as he rolled up the blueprints. “We’ve never had the most..  _ stable  _ relationship, I guess. We’re trying, though. ..Honestly I’m not sure if it’s going to work out.”

Jeremiah rested his pencil against his cheek. “Maybe you just need to try different approaches?” He shook his head to himself. “I suppose that’s the engineer in me speaking, not the romantic. Not my area of expertise.”

Bruce tilted his head. “You’ve never dated someone before?”

“Not really. I liked this girl at school in sophomore year- she was another engineering student. We had a lot of classes together, she had plenty of friends, I still have no idea why she wanted to be mine. I was the redhead who sat in the second row in every lecture and knew the answers to almost every question. Her crowd usually sat in the back. You know-  _ those _ people.” 

Bruce sat down as Jeremiah spoke, genuinely interested in his story. “Anyway, we sat together in one lecture, then lunch, and pretty soon she was hanging out with me more than with her other friends. I don’t know why she wanted to hang out with me when all the hot guys in the engineering school were chasing after her. She still had contact with the popular kids, though, so after a few weeks of getting closer and closer she invited me to a party. I just.. really wanted to hang out with her so I went. It was my first real party, too. There was alcohol.. one thing led to another.. and… um…” Jeremiah began to trail off, freckled cheeks flushing pink. 

“You don’t have to tell me if it’s too personal, I understand.” He expected Jeremiah to skirt around this part, talking about sex with anyone who wasn’t a partner was  _ extremely  _ awkward. 

Jeremiah cleared his throat. “Well… actually, we left the party and went back to her dorm, the whole floor was out, roommate included. I guess she had planned it, or maybe she slept around, because as soon as I shut the door to her room she shoved lube and a condom into my hands. We were both hammered. I was totally fine until she took off her shirt. She wasn’t even wearing a bra under it, so.. her chest was just..  _ out.” _

Bruce could only assume that that was the very first time that Jeremiah had actually seen a woman naked before, judging by how he was telling the story. “So.. you two had sex?”

“Well, I think she really wanted to, but..” He played with the end of his tie. “..I was suddenly hit by the awful realization that I wasn’t attracted to her- I wasn’t attracted to women at  _ all _ .”

Bruce’s brows shot up. This was news to him. “ _ Oh _ .. Well… that certainly must’ve put a damper on your whole situation.” He smiled into his hand. “What did you do? Tell her that you were.. You know.. gay?”

Jeremiah rubbed the back of his neck and chuckled breathily. “Uh.. no, not directly, at least, but I think she figured it out. I told her that I wasn’t actually interested in sex. She kinda just gave me an odd look, but after a few seconds she got it. She put her shirt back on and took the lube and the condom, then laid down on her bed and proceeded to pass out immediately.”

A lot of things were running through Bruce’s head, namely the fact that Jeremiah just came out to him. “And how long was it before she spoke to you again?”

“Oh, the next week I saw her in class again. Either she didn’t remember or she didn’t care, because we never spoke about it. I didn’t want to bring it up, I guess she didn’t, either.” He shrugged. “But, I got my fancy degree and my fancy diploma, with my fake name on it and everything.” 

She knew Jeremiah as Xander,  _ everyone  _ in college, high school, middle school, at the orphanage, they all knew him as Xander, not Jeremiah. They all knew him as someone else entirely, as a completely different person. “I never asked, how did you tell Ecco the truth about your past?”

Jeremiah pushed up his glasses, smiling at Bruce fondly. “I put out the word that I needed an assistant with a certain set of skills. Ecco was the only one who passed the test. I figured I could trust her with the truth. Right before her first day I told her the truth, gave her the option to walk out, no strings attached.” He shrugged. “She didn’t.”

“..Is she mad at me?”

Jeremiah frowned. “What for?”

“Giving you a job, leaving her out of one, taking up all of your free time.” He grabbed his bottle of water and took a few swigs, suddenly feeling parched. “I’d be pissed if some rich asshat came along and became best friends with  _ my  _ best friend and boss.”

Jeremiah crossed his legs up on his work table, looking at Bruce for a few seconds. He took a breath and shrugged. “She’s always been good at making friends, even if she’s quiet. People just come to her. She’s blonde, skinny, pretty, she has a soft voice. Men like that, I guess. I’ve paid her enough to last a year or two’s rent in a good apartment here, if she doesn’t want to move. I don’t mind continuing to pay her, but I know she won’t like it.” 

Bruce tapped the blueprints gently. “I’d offer a place at work, but I think we’re filled, and I don’t know if she’d like to work technically for me.” 

Jeremiah made a bit of a face. “You really think she hates your guts? For being my friend? Bruce, it’s not like you took me away from her, or something. She never tried to date me, nothing went on between us. We’ve always just been friends, that’s it.”

“I just know that you guys are pretty close, that’s all.”

“Well, if she had any interest.. from my story you know that it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Maybe she did and was worried I would’ve fired her if she asked me out, or maybe she just figured keeping things professional was better. Work and relationships don’t mix well, I guess.” 

Bruce rested his chin on his hand. “That makes us an outlier, then.” 

“Hah, if you really want to look at it that way, yes, it does.”

***

Bruce slid the gauntlet over his hand. He made a fist and uncurled it, testing the flexibility of the material. His eyes went to Lucius. “..I’m sorry about the other pair.”

“I told you, it was a prototype just to see if the material would work for an underlayer.” He gestured to the new pair of gauntlets as Bruce slid the one off of his hand. “These should be much more durable, underlayer is the same material, outer layer is a harder, far more durable material. I had to give you something just so you would break it eventually. And I needed time to make the real thing.” 

“Thank you, Lucius. Really.” Bruce set the gauntlet down and straightened up. “You  _ know  _ what I’m going to ask for next.”

Lucius clasped his hands together in front of him, lips drawn into a thin line. “Bruce.. I care about you and your safety, so before you say anything, I’m going to ask once more..” He reached up and gently grabbed Bruce’s shoulder, looking him in the eyes. “Are you absolutely ready to do this for the city? Are you ready for people to find out, for rumors to spread, for police uncertainty, for unrest? Are you ready for the consequences that you will face if you are ever caught?”

Bruce searched Lucius’s face for a moment. “I’d rather go to prison for vigilantism than sit around in my ivory tower and do nothing for my city. I’m done waiting around for someone to do something.  _ This  _ is what all of my training with Ra’s was for. This is what I’m supposed to do, Lucius. I’m  _ meant  _ to protect Gotham. No one else can, it needs to be me.”

“And what does Alfred think about all of this?” Lucius dropped his hand on Bruce’s shoulder. 

“I still don’t think he really knows just how serious I am about this. But he’ll see. And as cold as this sounds.. he can’t stop me.”

Lucius closed his eyes and sighed slowly through his nose. “Your father would kill me for letting you do this… He’d also kill me for not helping you if I knew about it. I don’t want to start a war between us, Bruce, and clearly I can’t change your mind. Just let me know what you need and I’ll start working on it right away.”

Bruce nodded, smiling at him. “I will, I have some basic things in mind right now. Thank you, Lucius. You’re the only person I trust with something like this.” He held out his hand and Lucius shook it firmly.

“Just let me know when you’re ready. I’ll take your measurements, compile a list of materials needed. Depending on what you need, I can give you a more or less exact ETA. ...There is one thing that I won’t be able to help you with, though.”

Bruce’s brows came together admittedly confused at what Lucius meant. “What’s that?”

“Coming up with a catchy name, of course. That’s all on you- or the people of Gotham.”

Bruce’s shoulders dropped and he chuckled softly. “I just don’t want a stupid name.”

Lucius smirked at him. “What, you don’t like the name The Riddler?” 

“I guess he must think that it’s more badass than ‘Edward Nygma’.” Bruce shrugged. “Not my call to make at this point.”

***

Bruce always made sure to load up on carbs before going out, because being hungry while in the city was not anywhere close to ideal. He needed his strength and energy to operate at maximum efficiency, both mentally and physically. 

It was starting to get into May, which meant that the sun was out for longer, and the actual window for committing certain crimes was growing slimmer due to there being more daylight later in the day. So Bruce went out right when the sun got to a certain point in the sky where it would be just above the horizon when he got into the city. 

He perched on the edge of a rooftop, listening into the GCPD’s radio comms. Gotham never got too warm in the spring or summer, but both seasons were at least brighter and less cloudy than the other half of the year. It was never overly humid, the highest temperature in Gotham that Bruce ever experienced was 80 F, and that was during a heat wave. The temperature in summer was usually in the 60s, for spring usually the 50s and 60s. That was good for Bruce, it meant that he had more choices when it came to the material that his suit would be made out of. It would be easier to layer up under the suit than stay cool inside of it. 

Bruce didn’t realize it, but he did an unnaturally large amount of perching, specifically when he went out into the city. It was easier to literally just jump or stand up or to roll to the side at a very short notice while he perched or squatted. He even started to do it on random occasions when he wasn’t thinking about it, sometimes Alfred or Jeremiah would catch him squatting in a chair, knees practically up to his ears. They never said anything. 

Bruce also went on rooftops mostly. There were a lot of benefits on staying on the roofs of the city. First off, almost no matter where he went he still heard the GCPD comms, second, he was less likely to be seen while still being able to see other people, and third, it was always  _ quiet _ . He stayed away from the places that had parties just below his feet. He always found the quietest place and was able to look over the city while listening to his police scanner in peace. That’s how he wanted it to be. He wanted to be silent. If people picked up on him being a vigilante, that was another thing. He wasn’t sure that he really wanted that. 

He was becoming more and more dedicated to his task, but that didn’t mean that he wanted to form an alliance with the city council and shake hands with the mayor like he was a celebrity. He wanted there to be rumors, but he didn’t want people to come to an agreement or consensus about him. He wanted the police to respect him, he wanted criminals to fear him, he wanted to give the people hope. 

He didn’t really want people to give him a name. Probably because on some degree he was certain that Gotham would come up with something really stupid or embarrasing. 

He stood from his squat and slowly paced the rooftop, because suddenly he was reminded of Jeremiah. He supposed that he was thinking of Jeremiah because he was thinking about being a vigilante and who he could and couldn’t tell. He didn’t know if he should tell Jeremiah. 

The two of them became very close very fast. Bruce honestly had never had a friend like Jeremiah. Jeremiah was brilliant. Jeremiah didn’t see his money first, he saw  _ him _ . As stupid as it sounded, Jeremiah always was nice to Bruce, and for a while he thought it was just out of pity, because that’s why most people were nice to him. That, or to get his money. But Jeremiah didn’t fit either category. 

Bruce figured that Jeremiah was lonely as well. He really only had Ecco as a friend as an adult, and clearly he didn’t have anyone close growing up. He and his brother were definitely close at one point, but that was a long time ago. Bruce knew that Jeremiah must’ve understood him, just on a person-to-person level. He knew what it was like to go through trauma, to lose your parents, to feel shy, to be alone. Miah felt calming to Bruce, he didn’t yell, he didn’t try to nitpick everything that Bruce did. He wasn’t fake, either. 

They were close enough to the point where Jeremiah felt like he was ready to come out to him. 

Bruce felt his stomach tense up, it always did when he started thinking about himself, because now he was reflecting on his own sexuality. It was always weird for Bruce. He’d been taught somewhere along the line that ‘boys like girls and girls like boys’. When he had his first basic teachings of sex education when he was about 10 or 11, sex was defined as something along the lines of ‘the process in which a man inserts his penis into the vagina of a woman, either for the purpose of reproduction or pleasure’. He still remembered it because he barely understood it at the time, and after becoming a young adult, he realized what a closed-minded definition it was. 

At the very least, his parents always talked to him in terms of marrying women, not men. Until he met Selina, Bruce was pretty sure that he’d had no feelings for other people in a romantic or sexual sense. He developed feelings for Selina rather quickly after they met, he was just starting puberty and she clearly had already. So, you could say that his first sexual attraction was to women, but it didn’t take long for him to realize he liked men, too. And honestly, that was a little scary. 

At least Bruce was ‘half straight’ by definition, and he hadn’t told anyone, not even Alfred. But Jeremiah wasn’t into women whatsoever. Bruce knew that many people in his circles rejected the idea of bisexuality, so what about homosexuality? From the way that Jeremiah was talking, Bruce figured that he may have been the only person that he told. That was a lot of trust. 

But was that ‘I’m a literal vigilante and if you tell the police I’ll be fucked’ trust?

Bruce stopped on the roof, his head felt cloudy. Thinking about his own sexuality and Jeremiah in a small time frame was a dangerous game.  _ Work and relationships don’t mix well _ . 

And even if Bruce decided to not come out to Jeremiah in turn, what if people somehow found out? Not that he really cared about people’s opinions, but what if people hated him and rejected him for it, and what if it sent his company under? What if coming out destroyed everything his family worked for? What if Alfred thought he was stupid and left? What if Selina dumped him for it? What if Jeremiah was somehow forced out as a result? What if-

He stopped his thoughts as a voice came over his ear piece. It was a squad car, calling in an incident on the other side of town. Bruce’s eyes wandered over there, but he stopped himself from beating himself up when he realized that, from this rooftop, he wouldn’t have seen anything if he’d been paying attention. He really needed to get better at that. 

“..one injury, says he was the only one in the building. But, uh.. you’re gonna wanna hear this.”

“Some elaborate puzzle set up by The Riddler?”

  
“No, the person- the thief who attacked- was a woman. Guy says she was in all black and had black and orange face paint on. Like a  _ tiger _ .” 


	2. Chapter 2

Bruce ran to the edge of the roof and jumped, flying through the air, over a small alley, and onto the next roof. He still heard the comms in his ear. “What? A tiger?”

“Yeah, guy says she looked like a tiger. Had a whip at the very least, used it to subdue him, knock him out, I guess.”

“There’s another car on the way, they’ll secure the next few blocks.”

“I dunno about that, guy called it in as soon as he woke up- no alarms were triggered. He says he figures he wasn’t out for more than a few minutes.”

“So she just stole and item or two. Par for the course around here.”

Bruce jumped to a lower rooftop and rolled, then got up and continued to run. “Well… we’re checking the security feeds right now… she’s taking a lot. And moving quick, too.” 

Bruce’s brows came together. The thief didn’t even bother to put down the security system? She must’ve been extremely confident in her abilities to not get caught. But if she was moving efficiently, this was a premeditated hit, she knew where the things that she wanted to take were located. She knew there would only be one security guard. She knew the area well. 

“So.. you’re telling me that a single woman was able to get into a jewelry store, subdue the security guard, steal millions in only a few minutes, and escape without a trace? All by herself?”

“Well, maybe she planned it with someone else, but… yeah, that’s the gist of it.”

“Should I call the captain?” 

“Nah, I’d say it’s just a freak accident, don’t bother him at this hour. He’ll find out tomorrow.” A siren wailed in the background, Bruce could faintly see its lights in real time a few blocks away on the street below. “I think we’ve got it handled. This shit happens all the time.”

“Yeah. Dunno what to make of that tiger look, though.”

Bruce made it to the roof across the street from the jewelry store, and he could see the two cops cars outside on the street. He eventually saw another car roll up, a normal one, and a man stepped out of it. He was greeted by the police officers, Bruce heard him cry out. This guy was clearly the store owner. 

He perched on the edge of the roof again as he listened, both for the scanner to go off again and the talk outside of the jewelry store. The group soon moved into the store, so Bruce had no ideas as to what was being said. He wanted to help, but he knew that what happened happened. He at least had a lead on the thief. 

Bruce turned as the group came out of the store. He heard something along the lines of “station tomorrow, it’s late,” and “these things happen.” He dropped his shoulders. It would be time for him to turn in soon, he might as well start heading back to the car. He jumped to another rooftop when the comms came back on. 

“Just got a call from another location- _ another _robbery. You guys can get on it?”

“Sure thing, we’ve just finished up here, where is it?” 

“It’s at Wayne Enterprises.” 

Bruce froze, then he suddenly whipped around, eyes going to his very own skyscraper in the center of the city. The officers clearly were feeling the same way. “I’m… I’m sorry Don, did you say.. Wayne Enterprises?”

“I did- the location of the robbery is Wayne Enterprises.”

“..We’re on our way.”

Bruce’s heart suddenly jumped into his throat. He swallowed thickly and double tapped on his ear piece. “..Hey.”

“Ah, I’ve been wondering when you were gonna call, mate. It’s a bit on the late side, how ‘bout you hurry on back home, Master B?”

Bruce took one step across the roof, but he eyes were still fixed on his building. “Alfred… someone just robbed Wayne Enterprises.”

“...That’s not funny, Master B. You know the security measures would’ve gone off if someone got inside at this hour.” 

“That’s the problem, Alfred. They didn’t.” 

***

When Bruce got a call from the GCPD, he had to pretend to be shocked at the news of the robbery. Jim called him himself, telling him that they would talk at the station as soon as Bruce could get down there. He hung up, and then he got another call- this time from Jeremiah. It was bittersweet, because although Bruce wanted to hear from him, he clearly heard about what had happened. 

“This isn’t right, how could someone bypass Lucius’s security measures? On top of all the guards that patrol around there?”

Bruce sighed softly. “I just hope nothing important was stolen, they didn’t even say what part of the building was broken into. ...I can’t hope for much, though. If they knew how to bypass the security systems then they clearly went there to get something that only we have.” 

“Which means it was probably valuable… Do you want me to come down to the station with you? Keep you company?”

Bruce could hardly believe Jeremiah’s offer. “You must be really bored if you’re asking if I need your company at the police station.” 

“I am. And I’m anxious. I want to know first thing what was stolen, if you’ll let me be there, of course.”

He padded down the stairs, going out to the garage. “I’d appreciate it. Lucius will also be there. I know that they’re going to interrogate him, see if he had anything to do with the system being bypassed.”

“Have you spoken to him, yet?” 

Bruce leaned against his car. “No, but I’m sure he’s really pissed and beating himself up over it. I think Jim and Harvey will be on this just because I’m so _ high profile _. They know Lucius like I do, they just have to cover their bases so higher-ups don’t freak out on them.” 

“I know, and I’m sure he does, too. I’ll see you there, alright?”

“See you soon, Miah.” 

***

Jeremiah was already standing outside of the police station when Bruce got there. His arms were tucked around himself, but when they made eye contact from across the street, Bruce felt his demeanor change. 

“Hey.” 

Jeremiah shoved his hands into his pockets. “Hi, Bruce.” 

Bruce sighed, shoulders raising and lowering just as quickly. “Come on, we need to see what’s going on. The police won’t bite.” 

“Well, I think that that’s part of why I don’t trust any of them.” 

“Don’t worry, I’ll take all of the blows, all the questions will be directed at me.” He strode over to the entrance and pulled the door open. “Besides, Harvey and Jim would go easy on you, anyway.”

Jeremiah followed Bruce in, which really told Bruce just how anxious he was. “You just… you know how I get.”

“I do.” The two turned the corner and came onto the floor of the police station. Bruce’s eyes flitted up to a gargoyle overlooking them, Jeremiah was admiring the architecture and structure of the place. Bruce tugged on his sleeve gently to get his attention, and Jeremiah followed him up to Jim’s office, hands clasped in front of him. Bruce walked up to the glass door to knock, but he looked through the blinds after hearing something muffled from behind the door. He moved over a bit and saw just who was mouthing off to Jim, who seemed to be patiently sitting behind his desk: Oswald Cobblepot. 

“Who is it?” Jeremiah stood back, but he could hear the shouts as well. 

“Oswald.. I don’t know what he’s saying..” Bruce pulled away before Jim saw him peeking through the blinds. He turned to Jeremiah. “I guess we wait here until he comes out, I’m sure he’s going on about taxes or their partnership or-”

“Bruce!” 

Both men slowly looked up and to their rights to see Lucius and Harvey coming down the stairs from the second floor. Lucius gave Bruce a smile that was bittersweet. “Bruce, I-” 

Bruce held up his hand as Lucius and Harvey came over to them. “Lucius, it’s not your fault, something went wrong.” 

“But I _ always _account for 99.9% of things that could go wrong, how did this slip under the cracks?”

Harvey patted Lucius’s back. “You didn’t account for that 0.1%- the fact that we live in whack-job Gotham.” He shook his head. “They didn’t steal much, but I know why you guys are concerned.” 

“What did they steal?” Jeremiah shifted next to Bruce. 

Harvey crossed his arms. “Guards say one of the labs on the third floor was raided- whole place was trashed. We’re going to interview the people who work down there, Bruce. See if they can identify anything from the security tapes of serious value that was taken, if we know what they took it’ll be easier to hunt them down, figure out what they want. ..How much can you say about the projects that you guys are working on right now?”

Bruce shrugged. “Depends on which one. The third floor is mostly biomed, I think. We have a lot of projects going on for R&D. It could be anything. Was that they only thing that was hit?” 

“As far as we know, yeah, but we haven’t exactly gone through all of the feeds, yet. Lucius and I were just starting on that, actually. Why, you got a place you’re worried about?”

Bruce glanced at Jeremiah for a moment, then slowly nodded. “I do.”  


Harvey led them back up the stairs. There was a computer at the desk up there, and Lucius waved the mouse before pulling something out of his pocket- a chip. He connected it to the computer and a set of files popped up. Bruce remembered it, it was a remote system Lucius had been working on to monitor all surveillance at Wayne Enterprises without being in the building. It was largely intended for use when large tour groups were coming through the building, and it was also how Lucius was to be notified if any of the doors were unlocked between certain hours of the night, signalling an intruder. He even put sensors in all the vents to detect movement for an intrusion. “Your call, Bruce.” 

“Let’s look at the lab footage first.” He said softly, and Lucius scrolled to the correct camera feed. 

Everything was stored up to the past 48 hours in footage, it was live updated so they saw the ransacked lab with police tape all across it, forensics were still poking around. Lucius began to back it up. “When was the call made?”

“Uh, just thirty minutes past midnight, try right around there.” Harvey said, arms crossing.

Bruce watched Lucius find the correct time, and he stared as the footage began to play. It was rather good quality, all the cameras were top-notch and extremely sharp. The four men were silent as the picture was essentially still, until a dark figure came from off-screen. Bruce frowned. “They walk in or go through a vent?”

“Wish I knew.” Lucius answered softly. 

The thief was in all black, and they slowly stalked over to a small fridge in the corner of the room. Their back was directly to the camera, none of them could see their face. They opened the fridge, and after taking out a few vials of liquid and examining them, they threw them on the ground, shattering them. They looked through the shelves, picking out a few vials and tucking them into their jacket pocket after reading their labels. They turned and went up to a computer in the corner, and Bruce couldn’t help but cringe as they struck the monitor with their elbow and began to pull the cords in all the wrong direction. They threw the monitor across the room, then the tower, which promptly popped open upon impact with the ground. 

They went to another small fridge and pulled out the disks that were residing there. They tucked one away, then slid a few off the shelf. Bruce shook his head. This didn’t make any sense, why were they causing all of this destruction? Why was she stealing? The thief came to the lab table in the center and kneeled to grab something from the cabinet below. They pulled out a microscope and threw it onto the ground. 

The thief slowly stood, and finally, their face was directed towards the camera. As soon as they were close enough, Bruce hit the spacebar to pause the feed, and he hid his own realization as Harvey came to the same one. “Holy mother..”

Bruce found himself zooming in on the feed as Jeremiah looked over to Harvey. “What, do you recognize them?” 

“Sort of..” Bruce enhanced the zoomed in image to the best of his abilities, but there was no mistaking what he saw. The quality didn’t give the thief identity away, but it did reveal something about their face. “We got a call around midnight last night, jewelry store robbed. Guy said that the thief was a woman with face paint on her cheeks, like a tiger.” And there the markings were, even through the black and white feed, the color differentiation was clear, as was the fact that the thief had a covering up to her nose across her face. “It’s the same damn thief. She hit up a jewelry store, then Wayne Enterprises.” 

“How does that even make any sense? What’s the connection?” Bruce could hear Jeremiah was starting to get annoyed or desperate, because that anxiety was really bleeding through again. He exited the feed and went to the main files again, looking for one lab in particular. 

“Well, I don’t have a great guess, but.. just now you two were outside of Jim’s office. Penguin’s in there- the jewelry store that was hit is _ his _.” 

Lucius sighed. “Great, so this thief might be trying to start another city war. Clearly they’re smart and have resources if they were able to bypass both security systems.” 

Jeremiah pressed his face into his hand, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “She had enough confidence to rob fucking Penguin and Bruce on the same night? Who the hell is she, what does she want?” 

Bruce finally found the room he was looking for and double-clicked on the feed. He quickly looked to a particular spot on the workbench in the back, and he felt his heart sink. He gently reached behind him and tapped Jeremiah’s arm. “...Jeremiah..” 

The redhead stepped closer, focusing back on the screen. It didn’t take him long for him to notice what Bruce had noticed just a moment before. “..Bruce?”

The ravenette went back for hours and hours to around the time of the lab incident. He skipped forward a bit until the thief was in the room. He and Jeremiah watched as she went over to the back corner that they’d both been looking at, and she picked up the small device that was there. Bruce heard Jeremiah gasped as she tucked it into a pouch at her hip and quickly fled the room. The same spot was now clear of anything in the live feed. 

Bruce slowly straightened himself up and looked to Jeremiah. “Jeremiah..” 

The redhead clapped his hand over his mouth, Bruce saw his eyes watering. “This can’t be happening..” 

Bruce gently grabbed his shoulders. “Hey, hey, it’s ok. We can build another one-” 

“I- I shouldn’t have left it out on the table like that! I thought the room was secure-!” 

Bruce slipped his arms around Jeremiah’s back, and he felt him lean against him, shaking and holding him back tightly. “No, no, no. It’s not your fault, it’s no one’s fault. You didn’t know, you always keep your prototypes out, it was an accident, it’s _ her _fault.” Bruce was trying to remain calm, but he was worrying below the surface. Why did she steal that prototype? Did she know what it was for? How could she, it was something only he, Jeremiah, and Lucius knew about. They kept it hush-hush for very important reasons. 

Bruce pulled away from his hug with Jeremiah, he didn’t realize just how tightly they were holding each other. Jeremiah wiped his eyes, rubbing away any tears he’d shed in frustration. “I’m just worried, what if she knows what it's for? And what it can do?”

Bruce just shook his head to himself. “We have no idea who she is or what she wants. All we know is that she hit up Oswald’s store, then the labs. There’s absolutely no way she knows what it’s for.” 

“Do you think she must have something against you two? She tipped over the lab pretty badly all by herself-” Harvey began, but he was interrupted by someone below them. 

“I cannot believe this city, Jim. She hit up _ my _store-!”

“Oswald, I understand that you’re upset. We’ll find her and find the rings that she stole.” Bruce stepped over to the railing and looked down, eyes quickly falling upon two very familiar figures. 

“I don’t _ care about the damn rings _ ! Forget them, it’s the principle, the audacity, the lack of respect! The thief went _ right _under my nose!” Oswald practically screeched at the captain. 

“Oswald, I understand, but the investigation is just starting. I’ll need a list of anyone you’ve pissed off in recent months. Anyone who has resources.” Bruce came around to the stairs and set off down them. 

“_ Well _ , we both know that both lists will be rather _ long _.” Oswald turned and locked eyes with Bruce. “Oh, Bruce, Mr. Valeska, what are you two-?”

“Wayne Enterprises was robbed last night.” Bruce replied softly. He shoved his hands into his pockets upon seeing Oswald so close. Just last week Bruce had found one of his men’s hideouts and stormed it. As a crime lord and a vigilante, Bruce and Oswald were enemies, but as two businessmen who called Gotham their home, they could be allies. Bruce just never asked questions about Oz’s illegal activities.

Oswald’s brows raised. “What? Wayne Enterprises?” He looked at Jim, then back to Bruce. “Surely you’re kidding, Bruce, April Fool’s was last month..” 

“I wish I was.”

“Well this obviously is proof that the thief has a grudge against people who’ve made it in this town, that’s for sure.” Oswald exhaled sharply through his crooked nose. “A grudge against Bruce and I, I can’t believe it. Just when things have been good for the past few weeks we get _ this _.” 

Oz pulled on his shirt and straightened up. “Well, Jim, you’ve asked me everything, I’ll get back to you as soon as possible or if I can think of anything. My resources are at your disposal to figure out just who this thief is. I hope the next time I’ll see all of you, at least one of us will have some news. Gentlemen.” 

He turned and began to hobble out of the police station. Jim watched him go, clearly unimpressed. After Oz turned the corner, he looked back to the two young men. “Bruce, I’m glad you could make it. Jeremiah..” Jim’s brows came together. “I’m surprised to see you here. You don’t get out much.” 

“I came because this is really important.” Jeremiah replied, pushing up his glasses habitually. “Bruce and I just saw surveillance of Wayne Enterprises last night.” 

“And? What was stolen?”

“Some samples from the biomed lab.” Bruce said. “And.. something really really important that we’ve been working on.” 

“Well, what is it?”

Jeremiah shifted next to Bruce nervously, and the two were silent for a moment. Bruce finally spoke up. “Something _ really _important for the generators.”

“_ How _important? What are we talking here?” They’d finally put the first generator up just at the start of the month in a wealthy side of town (much to Bruce’s and Jeremiah’s dismay, but they had to do whatever the city council permitted). Of course they were still working on a few other generators to power the other areas of town, but they’d also been working on something to make the generator produce even more power over a wider radius. That way, they really wouldn’t have to build too many generators to power the whole city. 

“Something that will make the generators create even more energy.” Bruce replied, but then he huffed. “At least… it’s _ designed _to increase overall power output.” 

“What do you mean ‘designed’? It has other secondary functions that are negative?” Jim dropped his arms and gave Bruce a ‘you’re shitting me right now’ look. 

“Captain..” Jeremiah rubbed his wrist that didn’t have his watch on it. “We’re dealing with energy, electricity. It’s an exact science, but it is still a dangerous one. Any time that you have a single machine storing and producing mass amounts of energy to be used, there’s going to be some hiccups and security measures you have to take to make sure nothing goes catastrophically wrong. And.. we haven’t exactly gotten _ that _far on the project yet. So.. there’s still going to be some hiccups in the prototype that was stolen.” 

Jim was silent for a moment before he spoke slowly. “..You’re telling me that you two have built something that could potentially go ‘catastrophically wrong’, and some random street thief is in possession of it now? Are you telling me that you two built a _ weapon _?” 

“No!” Bruce said sharply. He hesitated, his voice dropped. “At least… it isn’t _ meant _to be a bomb. But like Jeremiah said, with all of that energy and one thing going wrong, it could potentially be an overload of the system-”

“You two knowingly put a _ bomb _ in the middle of the city?! What the hell were you thinking?”

“Jim, it’s not like that, our new project will increase output while decreasing how much is stored, it’s supposed to cut off the generators once they get to a certain level of power that is considered close to being unstable.” Bruce replied quickly, trying to calm Jim down. “The council didn’t give us enough time to do it on the original design, but if the new addition works we can just completely work it into the generators so it’ll just be one system, completely unseparated.”

“Oh, the council didn’t give you enough time? That’s your excuse? How many lives have you put in danger?” Jim’s voice didn’t waver in anger, and Bruce knew he wasn’t listening to him. 

“The generators have a security measure, we just decided that we should lower the cutoff point by a good portion, the generator can fix itself in less than an hour and people will have all their electricity again after a brief period. No one’s in danger, we’ve taken the precautions-” Bruce could hear his voice rising in volume and pitch, he was pretty sure that Jeremiah had taken a step back from the conversation to give them space to argue.

“But there’s still a _ chance _ , and you _ still _put out the project even though you knew about that small chance.” 

“I told you, the council-” 

“You’ve been working on this since February!” 

Suddenly, Bruce’s voice was back to being its normal volume, but he could feel his cold tone when he spoke. “Two of us have been working on this- _ two. _ Three if you count the occasional input from Lucius, and I am _ not _ an engineer, so Jeremiah did _ a lot _ of the work, even after I joined him on it. He has worked his ass off to help this city, and I’m surprised the _ you _of all people can’t see that.” 

His words went through the air around them right outside of Jim’s office. A still silence fell over them, Jeremiah shifted his weight again, Bruce stared into Jim’s eyes and watched him yield just a little. “I’m… I’m sorry, Bruce. I’m sorry, Jeremiah. I didn’t mean that your project isn’t valuable and helpful to the city…” He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s no excuse, but the vigilante that has appeared in the past few weeks… it’s really stirring up everyone.” 

Jeremiah frowned. “They haven’t killed anyone, have they?”

Jim huffed. “No, but they’re operating outside of the law on their own terms. No one has the right to outright assault someone, especially with how badly he’s brutalizing everyone that we know of. Sadly, it’s only a matter of time before they will probably turn on the city, that’s a recurring pattern here. And as captain and an officer, I have to look at it from a negative point of view, even if they technically are helping us.” 

“I say let them do their work.” Harvey came over to them, Lucius behind. He spread his arms shrugged. “They’re beating up lowlife scum, we can’t exactly be mad at them for that. Plus a bunch of cops were doing that anyway before we started to change things around here. I say until we see dead bodies, they’re good in my book. Less work and worries for us, everyone’s been actually working their set shifts since this person has popped up.”

Jim slowly looked over to his partner. “...I get where you’re coming from, Harv, I really do, but this is already starting to get out of control.” 

Bruce’s brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Well, the way I see it, this thief clearly has been inspired by the vigilante. We haven’t caught them, yet, so she thinks that she won’t be caught, too. Only she’s using her skills for crime upfront.”

Bruce shook his head to himself. “Jim, I understand you have to uphold the law, of course you do-”

“_ Bruce _ .” Jim placed his hand on Bruce’s shoulder and looked directly into his eyes. “I would try to reach this vigilante, I really would, but I’m in a position of authority where I have to seriously watch any moves I make. Of course I want to believe that they’re good, you _ know _that. But I can’t make that call, and I can’t risk the reputation of this entire department or the entire safety of the city to make it.”

“What about Penguin?” Jeremiah asked suddenly, looking between Harvey and Jim. “The GCPD has been after him for years, but he’s still got just enough blackmail and money in people’s pockets to make sure that he doesn’t go to prison. We _ all _know he’s a crime boss, but you guys can’t touch him. In theory, this vigilante can.” 

Harvey nodded, gesturing to Jeremiah. “He’s got a point, Jim.”

Jeremiah gesticulated with his hand, pointing at nothing in particular. “And what about Riddler? He’s underground, but he’ll be coming back, we all know it, especially with how well Penguin is doing. I’m very aware of how they’ve fought in the past, but in the end, they’re partners, if Penguin flourishes, Riddler is coming back. The vigilante is smart enough to hide in the city and appear as a normal person, they’ll have at least _ some _chance against Riddler.” 

Lucius nodded. “I’d rather in his grand return that he face off with the vigilante, and not me like last time.” 

“And J.. my brother…” Jeremiah’s hand formed a fist, and Bruce could see that he was squeezing tightly. Jeremiah took a breath and looked at him. “...Arkham won’t hold him, we all know this. We’re just biding our time until he gets out again. And we know that he’s going to bring chaos to the city, especially if he teams up with Tetch again, or anyone else who has gone rogue in this city. Maybe Gotham _ needs _a vigilante to stop them, to be unbound by the law, to do what’s right because the police can’t.” He gestured to Bruce. “Bruce can fight, but Joker is going to be more dangerous than he’s ever been, and the city can’t keep counting on Bruce to fight- he’s a civilian like Lucius and I. The vigilante clearly knows the city very well, and they must know that Joker is… he’s.. unstable.” 

Jim pressed his hand to his face, then rubbed his temple. “I hear you, Jeremiah, I know that all of your points are valid, but the risk of relying on a random vigilante is too great.” 

“Oh, so leaning on a person that has only helped the city is worse than being friends with a genuinely _ known crime boss _ and doing favors for them for the past 5 years-?”

“_ Jeremiah _.” Bruce placed his hand on Miah’s shoulder. Why was Jeremiah acting like this? Why was he so defensive? Was he really that worried about the destruction that his brother would cause and his chances of breaking out of Arkham soon? Where did this sudden anger come from? Jeremiah stopped and slowly turned to Bruce. “Come on, J, let’s get out of here. We’ve done all we can for now.” 

Jeremiah nodded slowly after a moment. “Yeah.. yeah, ok.” He turned and Bruce followed him quickly away from the situation, giving his best ‘don’t look at me’ look to the other three men.

As soon as they were outside, Jeremiah slipped his glasses off and scrubbed his hand over his face. “Dammit..” 

Bruce stopped next to him, hugging his arms around himself instinctually. He wasn’t going to bother asking if Miah was alright, because clearly he wasn’t. “..Where did that come from?”

Jeremiah straightened up and shrugged, slipping his glasses back on as he looked at Bruce. “Honestly, I have no idea. I was just thinking about my brother and about how you’ve been involved in police affairs for so long. It’s not _ fair _, Bruce, you’re not an officer, and from what you’ve told me, Jim always seems to ask you to help with investigations. I know that you can fight, I know that you’re strong, but..” He dropped his gaze and began to fidget with his hands. “My brother wants to kill you- and now that he’s really snapped, I think he’s going to be more serious than ever to accomplish his goal. If this vigilante can fight and help, then maybe… maybe we could buy more time, or maybe he’ll be a great enough threat to be sent to a real hospital… maybe it’s not too late for him…” 

Bruce listened to Jeremiah in silence. After all this time, he still cared for Jerome, he still wanted to believe that there was good in him, and Bruce couldn’t blame him. He still held out hope, too, he always tried to see the good in people and fight for it. But for people like Jerome, who did so much bad over and over again, hope dwindled more and more every day. “I don’t think any other hospitals will take him at this point. And prison might be even worse than Arkham, you know how the system is.”

“The system is _ trash _, Bruce.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Not like I needed that to tell you of all people.” 

Bruce leaned back against the side of the police station, eyes fixed on Jeremiah. “...Do we even bother trying to fix it is the question.” Bruce gazed across the street for a moment as Jeremiah gave him a puzzled look. 

“Fix it?”

“If we had enough support and enough people on board, we could tear down Arkham and build a new hospital, hell, we wouldn’t even need to tear it down, just gut it and start over.” 

“..But the chances of anyone wanting to actually help the people here is… well, _ you know _.” 

Bruce bit the inside of his cheek as an uncomfortable silence fell over them. Jeremiah spoke after a few seconds. “...Jerome wanted to be a late-night host.”

Bruce couldn’t help the sad smile that came to his face. “..I’m sure he would’ve been really good at that.” Jerome was an extrovert, he was charming, had stage presence, he was _ made _for entertainment. If he and Jeremiah had just been in a different family situation, Bruce knew he’d be at the top of the game in a studio in LA or New York. “He has that ambition. I guess he’s always had it.” 

Jeremiah’s head was ducked so Bruce couldn’t see his eyes. “Yeah, he got all the extroverted genes, I got all the introverted ones. He’s always been ambitious- been more of a daredevil than I ever was. We talked about running away from the circus, leaving with just the clothes on our bodies and with handkerchiefs tied to long sticks like those homeless people that you see in cartoons. On the run, doing what we could to get by.”

Bruce could see his hands shaking. “How old were you?”

“I dunno, I can remember those talks going way back. Around the time we were seven he genuinely started throwing out ideas of me teaching us everything we would need, faking documents to get into high school, me getting a scholarship and becoming a fancy engineer while he tried it in the city for comedy clubs, small acting parts, anything to get himself on the grid.” He took a shaky breath and reached up to wipe his eyes. “It was pretty soon after that that our mother… took a lot of wrong turns, did a lot of bad things. I was better at being obedient than Jerome. Sometimes I begged him not to pull pranks because I knew it would lead to both of us getting hurt. I guess after a few months of that my mom began to trust me to some extent when I said I didn’t do anything. She still would hit me, but Jerome got beaten much worse. By her and… whatever _ scum _she brought over to earn extra cash..” He laughed bitterly and wiped his eyes again, a drop of water hit the pavement between them. “I began to associate him with getting hurt, with getting yelled at, with having strange people in our own home so… I guess that’s why I got up the nerve to make up stories for a few months and to leave it all behind.” 

He wiped his eyes and straightened up. “I’m sorry, Bruce, I didn’t mean to get emotional. First the prototype, now this.” 

“Hey, it’s alright.” Bruce placed his hand on Miah’s arm gently, locking eyes with him. “You’re stressed, thinking about your brother brings up memories, I completely understand. I’m glad you’re telling me, you and him are the only people we have to tell us what really went down during your childhoods.”

“Yes, and I’m done lying about it and hiding behind a bunch of lies. I stayed hidden for so long because I _ knew _that Jerome would come after me. I should’ve stepped up as soon as Galavan recruited him.” He sighed. “I should’ve visited him when I saw him on the news about killing our mother. If I’d stepped in either of those times.. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe he wouldn’t have died, maybe he wouldn’t be like the way he is now. Dying… Jesus, it fucked with him. I can’t even imagine. And after last time we saw him…” His shoulders dropped. “Bruce… I know that I talk a good game, but.. Tell me honestly, do you think it’s too late for him to be rehabilitated?”

Bruce stared at Jeremiah, dark green eyes meeting a shade that was more hazel. “...I have to hold out hope that we can do _ something _ . I _ have _to. I have to hold out hope that all of them can be helped.”

Jeremiah modded slowly. He glanced at nowhere in particular, then looked back to Bruce. “Where are you off to? Back home?”

Bruce shook his head. “No, I need to go talk to Selina.”

“You think she might have some leads on who the thief is?”

He shrugged. “I do. I mean, she’s almost always lived on the streets. Even if she doesn’t know anything concrete, a lead, a name, a face, anything could help in the investigation. The thief clearly has resources in high places, but they must have them in low ones, as well.” 

“...Bruce, you’re _ not _a cop.” 

“We need to get to the bottom of this, Jeremiah. I can’t just sit around all day when there’s a thief out there, plotting her next hit.”

The redhead huffed. “So what, you’re going to talk to Selina, trust her information and tell Jim what she said? Do you really think they’ll trust her? And do you really think that _ you _should trust her?”

Bruce could see that Jeremiah was getting visibly upset. “She wouldn’t lie to me.” 

“Bruce, if she knows who the thief is then she totally would! She stays with her pack, they don’t tell on each other, they don’t throw each other under the bus. They stick together. She’s going to put you on some wild goose chase that will end nowhere, then you’ll confront her and she’ll brush it off.” 

Bruce stuffed his hands into his pockets. He couldn’t deny Jeremiah’s words because he knew they were true. “..I’m still going to talk to her. I want to see her reaction.”

“To see if she’s really surprised or not?”

“Exactly. Because if she isn’t, I’ll know that she knew about it beforehand.”

***

Bruce raised his hand and gently knocked on the door to Selina’s apartment. She opened it. “Hey, you.” She leaned up and pressed a kiss to his cheek, then stepped back so he could come in. She shut the door behind him as he knelt down as one of her cats came up to him, purring loudly as he rubbed her head. “You’re the only person aside from me that she likes.”

He stood and pecked her lips as he came up. “Oh, yeah? Maybe she doesn’t consider me to be a threat to you.”

She shrugged and stepped over to the couch. Bruce was just glad that she wasn’t making a big deal about how they parted the precious night. He didn’t want to think about it. “Make yourself at home, what did you want to talk about?”

He simply followed her to the couch and sat a few inches apart from her. “I….” He sighed, looking at her. “Wayne Enterprises was robbed last night.”

Her eyes lit up. “_ What _? But Lucius has like, the most secure system in the whole city! Maybe even the whole world. What was stolen? Did anyone see who did it?”

“I know, and he’s been beating himself up all morning over it. I went down to the GCPD just before I called you, we looked at the footage. As far as we know it was just one woman, I’m sure she’ll be on the news tonight. I think they’ll release part of the footage where she’s facing the camera on the news tonight, spread the word and see what anyone knows. She hit up a jewelry store owner by Penguin first. Then she came and trashed one of my labs, stolen various things, and stole a very important prototype from Jeremiah’s lab.”

Selina tapped her nails rhythmically on the couch. “She got in through the system, didn’t set off anything at either location. This means that she’s smart. She knows people.” She made a bit of a face. “Why are you talking to me about this?”

“Because I know you know people that have a lot of reach. Clearly a lot of people were in on this, I’m sure one of your friends has information that would be helpful to the investigation.” 

She made a bit of a face. “...Bruce, you know you can rebuild the prototype that was stolen. And Penguin has enough money to replace the jewelry that was stolen.”

Bruce’s brows came together. “...I know.”

“So just… do that! Why don’t you let it be? You’ve got bigger things to worry about. It’s not like this thief stole your trade secrets.”

“Selina, the thief stole something really valuable from my company! Jeremiah’s been working on it for weeks!”

“And I’m sure that he can work on it again!” She suddenly moved closer to him and reached up to rub his arm. “Bruce, one little thief is one little thief. You and Penguin can both replace whatever was stolen. You need to focus on _ your _nightly activities. And just look at you! You’re asking me about a police matter like you’re a cop!” She shrugged. “Bruce, I know you have your pride, but maybe you should just drop it. I don’t know anything about this. You guys have no leads-”

“The thief painted their face like a tiger. She was skinny, clearly athletic.” Bruce cut in. 

Selina waved her hand. “But you don’t know who she is. And… really?” Her tone turned from playful to sour. “When you called I thought you wanted to discuss last night, or go out, or just… be with me. And you wanted to talk about a barely-open investigation? Really?”

“Well, you would’ve been more mad if I used take out as a cover.” 

She raised her brows. “I can’t believe you. Bruce, this isn’t your job.”

“But it’s my company.” 

“You have billions of dollars! If a few things go missing then big whoop! Just restart those programs, restart the research, whatever it is!”

Bruce’s brows came together. “Selina, what the hell are you even saying? You know how important this stuff is to me-”

“Well, maybe it should be less important! Bruce, your want to save this city… it’s controlling your life. It’s taking you over. You can’t keep doing this. Look at how it’s changed Jim. Hell, it’s changed you! I’ve always told you to never change too much!”

“But you hated how I was _ before _I changed.” Bruce snapped suddenly. They locked eyes. “Selina, I need to help people.”

“So spending an entire day with Jeremiah is helping people, huh?” 

Bruce suddenly goes still. He feels cold. “_ What _?”

She smirked. “Oh, Bruce, it’s ok. I just wish that you told me outright.”

“Told you what?”

“That you’re into Jeremiah.” 

Bruce felt his heart rate go up. “I’m not into Jeremiah.” 

Selina patted his arm. “It’s ok, there’s nothing to be ashamed about. Hey, I go two ways, too.” She sighed. “It’s just… kinda weird that you’re into the twin brother of one of the most despicable human beings on the planet. Someone who has hurt you and this city multiple times.” 

She was fucking mocking him, she was taunting him. “We just work on a lot of things together. We’re just really close friends, Selina, that’s all.”

“Hah, I’m sure you guys are doing a lot of _ important research _in that secluded bunker of his.”

Bruce bit the inside of his cheek. “Why are you trying to make me feel guilty for having a close friend? Are you seriously jealous of Jeremiah?”

That smirk fell away, her tone turned cold. “Bruce, you’re spending most of your free time with Jeremiah instead of me- your _ girlfriend _ . I’m not jealous, I’m _ pissed off _.”

“This has been going on for weeks, why haven’t you said anything? You could always reach out and suggest things for us to do together, you know! That’s part of the whole ‘making this work’ thing!” 

“Because I saw the signs and didn’t want to bother wasting my time if you were already in it for him! Why would I bother trying to win you back over when it was clear that you already made up your mind?” She stood and made her way over to the kitchen. “And now I _ know _that I’m right.” 

“Selina, we aren’t-”

“I bet you didn’t bother interrogating Jeremiah like this, did you?”

Bruce went to the kitchen island, starting to feel frustrated and overwhelmed. “Of course not! His prototype was stolen! And do you honestly think he would hire someone to steal his own invention? It doesn’t make any sense, there’s no reason for me to question him!”

She slapped her hand down onto the island. “He’s Jerome fucking Valeska’s twin brother, Bruce! They think the same way deep down! He could totally be hoodwinking you right now and you don’t even know it! His whole timid persona is probably just an act!” 

Bruce struggled to keep his voice calm. “I’m sorry that I’ve put you in this situation, Selina, I really am. I had no idea you felt this way, but there’s nothing between Jeremiah and I. We’re just friends, nothing more. We spend a lot of time together because we actually _ talk _ to each other about getting together. We actually talk about things going on in our lives, what we’re worried about. Whereas I’m shocked that you even picked up when I called before coming over here.”  


“Well if you just opened up to me-” 

“Well if _ you _ made me feel _ safe _talking to you then maybe I would!” His voice rang throughout the kitchen, and he could tell that he finally reached her by the look on her face. He suddenly felt so many emotions hitting him at once. His feelings towards Jeremiah lingered in the back of his mind as he thought about Selina and everything they’d been through. They’d tried for so long, and he finally was verbally admitting what he’d known for weeks. He couldn’t keep fighting with her like this. “You know, I don’t even know why I bothered. I can’t change you, I’m not going to force you to change. And you can’t change me. I tried to deal with it, I’ve tried to brush it under the rug, I’ve tried to look over it, but it doesn’t matter. We’re not compatible, Selina. This was a mistake. We’re always going to be stuck in this loop. This isn’t what it means to be in a relationship. I’m sorry I wasted your time. Spend it on someone else who is worth it for you.”

He turned and headed to the door to her apartment. “Bruce, wait!” 

He stopped and looked back at her. He actually saw her eyes were welling up, or maybe that was just the light reflecting in them. “You’re.. What are you saying?”

He swallowed thickly. “I’m saying that we’re done, Selina. I’m not the right person for you, I’ve been lying to both of us because I really wanted to make this work somehow. I wanted to give us enough chances, and I have. We’re not meant for each other. I’m sorry, go out and find someone who can do this better than I can.” He turned back and left the apartment without another word, gently shutting the door behind him. 

***

“Master B, I didn’t expect you’d take so long. What’d you find out?” 

Bruce slid into his chair at the kitchen table and looked over at Alfred, who was making lunch a few feet away. “...The thief stole a really important prototype that Jeremiah’s been working on. She trashed and stole from one of the labs.” He shrugged. “We really don’t have any leads or anything, her face was covered but the part that was showing had face paint on it.” 

“Oh, I see..” Alfred came over and placed a plate in front of the young man. It was a BLT, and upon seeing it Bruce’s stomach mimicked a whale for a brief moment. “Now, do you have any plans with Ms. Kyle for this afternoon or this evening?”

Bruce picked up the sandwich and promptly bit into it. “We.. um..” He mumbled into his food. He may or may not have taken a bite just as Alfred asked on purpose. He finished it and set the sandwich down, eyes going to father-figure. “..Selina and I broke up.” 

Alfred’s brows raised and his mouth took on an ‘o’ shape. He turned back into the kitchen and said nothing for a few minutes. Bruce could feel him glancing over to him, watching him. He finally spoke. “And… how do you feel about it?”

Bruce glanced over at him. “I should feel bad, but I don’t. It feels… fine. Good, even.” 

Alfred sat down next to him. “...For good this time, hm?”

“For good.” 

“Are you just saying that?” 

“I don’t love her, Alfred.” Bruce locked eyes with his old friend. “I haven’t for a while… I don’t think I ever loved her at all, actually. I think I was just… a lonely kid who wanted to be less lonely. I don’t feel bad about the actual breakup, but.. I do feel bad because I unintentionally have been leading her on, I think, and I didn’t even know it.” He sighed softly. “I just.. wanted to try and make it work. I guess my heart wasn’t in the right place. I just told myself that I wanted to make it work.” 

“How’d she take it, then? Are you two on good terms still?” 

“I’m the one who broke it off, Alfred.” He took another bite. “Selina… I’m sure she hates me now. And I don’t blame her.” 

Alfred nodded slowly. “All I can tell you is that if it wasn’t meant to be, it wasn’t meant to be. And I hope that, if need be, you and her will be able to put aside your differences and work together.”

Bruce shakes his head. “No, Alfred. She’s really changed in these past few months. Maybe she’s been like this for a while and I just didn’t see it, but we’re not alike. She has her path, I have mine.”

“...Well, what _ are _your plans for tonight?”

“I have to go out. The thief could strike again tonight. I need to gather as much information as possible, even just knowing where she’s hit will help me draw conclusions as to what she wants and where she could go next.” 

“I see, another long night, then? You’ll be out well past midnight again?”

Bruce looked over at him. “Alfred, I can’t keep explaining myself to you. The worst crimes happen at night, I have to be out in the city so that I can stop them as they develop.”

“And just how long do you intend to keep this up for? Another week? A month?”

Bruce squeezed his eyes closed. “Please, let's not talk about it. Not now.”

“Not now? When then? When the police figure out that it’s you? When you’re bleeding out in the street?”

Bruce stood, taking his plate with him. “I’m going to do some work on the cave. I’ll see you in a couple hours, Alfred.” 

***

Bruce never saw Gotham’s light pollution from the manor, but once the sun went down and he reached a certain part of the highway heading into the city, he just had to look above the tree line to see it clearly. The first time he really acknowledged it he asked Alfred what it was. Bruce was not an easy child to explain things to. He wanted to know everything about anything, so he always asked questions on top of questions. He was bad at taking ‘just because’ as an answer. 

Even now, he supposed that that was true. He dug for the truth, often recklessly. What could he say? He hated not knowing what was truly going on in his life. 

He listened closely to the comms in his ear. He’d heard about a call coming in while he was driving into the city. He stayed up on a roof as the officers came back on. “Bad news, we just got to the house. Bullet wound to the head. If those eye witnesses are legit, then we’ve got trouble. ...Hang on, get forensics out here. There’s a few drops of blood on the floor, too far to be the vic’s. Could be exactly what we’re looking for.”

Bruce put that in the back of his mind, he couldn’t exactly show up somewhere if the police were there, and even though he was close to the neighborhood, it wasn’t worth it. He had to focus on the thief and seeing where she would strike. He decided to stay in an area near more businesses that were owned by Penguin, hopefully she was planning to strike there. 

Bruce didn’t want to end his conversation with Alfred earlier so sharply, but he hated fighting with him. He didn’t care if Alfred did or didn’t support him, he just wanted him to see how he was helping the city. All of those months and hours of training were not going to go to waste. 

He was pulled from his thoughts with a yell coming from the alley to his right. “No, no, I gave you everything I have, I swear!”

He pushed himself from his spot on the roof and jogged to the edge of the building. He looked down into the alley and saw a scene that was sadly typical for Gotham. He pulled up his hood and dropped onto the fire escape below. The noise from the impact caused the assailant to look up. “Huh?”

Bruce hit the pavement from the upper floor and began to stalk over. The guy being hit on the ground looked at him, eyes wide as he made a variety of confused noises. The assailant dropped him and began to run off through the alley. 

Bruce was faster and caught up after mere seconds. He grabbed the guy and shoved him against the wall of the alley, holding him there with his left forearm. The guy held up his hands. “God, please, please, don’t kill me! Don’t kill me, god, I’ll do anything-!” 

Bruce pulled his fist back and punched his jaw, then let him drop to the ground. He slipped his hand into the man’s coat pocket and pulled out a wallet. He made out a face on the ID in the light from the street, and it definitely wasn’t the assailant’s. “Get out. Go back to where you came from before I _ really _hit you.” He growled. The guy quickly scrambled up and ran out of the alley clumsily. 

Bruce turned back into the alley and walked over to the man who’d been attacked. He was standing and staring at Bruce with wide eyes. “Uh..” Bruce held up his wallet and he took it with a shaky hand. “Th-Thanks, um… you got a name?”

“Do you need to go to the hospital?”

The guy was clearly taken aback. “Uh, no. No, I’m good..” 

Bruce brushed past him. “Just be careful, go directly home. Don’t stop.” He ran off down the alley without a second thought as the guy stared after him. 

“Well, uh, thanks again vigilante guy.”

Bruce turned the corner and stayed low in the alley as he decided on which roof to climb up to. He was just reaching a fire escape to jump to when he heard a deep rumbling, and then a screech of wheels on the streets that the alley led to. He pressed up against the wall just as a dark van passed the mouth of the alley.

The van screamed to a halt and Bruce stalked to the edge of the building. He saw the driver door open and a familiar figure in black stepped onto the street. The back opened and suddenly the thief, Mr. Freeze, and Firefly were all in the street together. 

“Woo! Let’s do this!” Firefly smirked and pulled out her flamethrower from its spot on her back. She followed the thief to a building, and this gave Bruce time to dart to another section of cover by a dumpster that was closer to them. Freeze followed slowly, as if he were in no rush. 

“Let’s just keep things calm, alright, Sparky?” He asked flatly. “If you’re not careful you’ll burn the whole block down.” 

“Oh, _ I’m _not the one who needs to be careful, Ice Block-”

“Shut _ up _, the two of you. I swear to god, no wonder Jerome’s grand plan with the whole blimp thing didn’t work out.” 

That was a voice that Bruce recognized, which caught him off guard. He definitely knew it, and he placed it quickly. “Freeze, the lock.” Their backs were turned to Bruce, but he could tell that Freeze was working on the lock of whatever building they were about to go into. This was dangerous. Bruce could fight the thief one-on-one, but just taking Firefly or Freeze alone was already a difficult fight. 

There was a dull thud as something hit the ground, and the three filed into the building. Bruce snuck up around the van and finally got his first clear look at it- a tailor shop. He watched from behind the van as the three entered and began to look around, almost nonchalantly. He couldn’t hear what they were saying any longer, but after a minute or so of browsing, the thief snapped, and the three began to purposefully look at different suits on display. Firefly grabbed a mannequin from the front window and, seemingly for no reason, smashed it through the glass. 

Bruce heard Freeze complain to her about making a mess, but she seemed to ignore him. Bruce inched to the edge of the van and peered through the door as their voices got softer. All three of them were going into the back room. He held his breath, and after another minute he heard sirens in the distance that were rapidly approaching. Someone in one of the apartments must have seen the van and called the GCPD. Bruce ran back into the alley and climbed up the fire escapes to the roof. He hid behind an air conditioning unit and still had the perfect view of the shop. The three came out, and the appointed leader was holding what must’ve been a suit. Only the street was dark, so Bruce couldn’t exactly see it very well. “Shit, that’s the cops, let’s roll.”

“Ugh, all I got to do was knock over some lousy mannequin!” 

“Well, I really only needed Freeze for the lock, but _ somebody _ just wouldn’t shut up about how bored she was. Calm down, just be glad that I let you come to begin with.” 

The blue and red lights were getting closer now. Firefly and Freeze ran to the back as the thief slid into the driver’s seat. The van started up and roared into life, shooting off down the street at an alarming speed. It turned the corner just as the cop cars came into view, and Bruce stepped back on the roof. 

He looked across the roof in the direction that the van had gone. He had no way of tracking it, and she may have only turned that way because they were rushing away from the cops. Bruce presses his comms twice in a row, and after a tone repeated a few times, Alfred’s voice came over it. “You alright there, Master B?” Bruce could hear the coolness in his voice, he didn’t blame him for still thinking about their arguement earlier. 

“I’m fine, Alfred. But Firefly and Freeze just hit up a tailor shop with the thief. I heard her speak, I know who she is.”

“Freeze and Firefly? Well, I think the most important question to ask at this point is just who is this thief, then?”

“Tabitha Galavan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me after getting a good start on this chapter: Ha! I think I can post this within two weeks! **Over two weeks later** Welp.   
I did get it in before the 3 weeks mark, though! I was extremely busy last week and seriously had almost no time to write. After the 13th or 14th it honestly look me this long to just write that final scene cuz I was so busy. BUT! That shouldn't keep happening, hopefully. I also wanted to make this a longer one because I feel like I want to extend my chapter to length to 7-8k words as opposed to my typical 5-6k. That's a reason why I have that '3-week bubble' thing basically set up.   
And let's be honest, those of you who read my other stuff KNOW that I couldn't keep up BatCat for long. Originally it was probably going to be next chapter that they would split, but I didn't want to keep writing fight scenes over and over.   
Anyways, thank you guys so much for reading, and let me know how you're liking it so far!


	3. Chapter 3

“Wait, wait. Let me get this straight. The sister of the guy who was going to cult sacrifice you as a child who has been working with Barbara Kean, Butch Gilzean, and on and off Penguin and Riddler… is the thief.” 

“Yes.” 

“But you haven’t really interacted with her since then, right? So… what, is she just mad that it never actually happened? So she’s breaking into your building as.. what, revenge?” 

Bruce pointed at Jeremiah with his chopstick. “I haven’t gotten that far. But I  _ know  _ it was her on that footage.” He stirs up his lo mein. “She’s tough, scary as hell, but she has a heart. She abandoned her brother at the last second to save Silver.”

“Your.. fake girlfriend that he set you up with?”

“Yes, Tabitha saved her and as a result, Theo was taken in, he took the fall for what happened. Under all of that, she does have a heart, but I have no idea why she’s stealing things.” Bruce stuffed some food into his mouth. “Last time I checked she was still with Barbara and all that, unless something changed her mind…” He gazed over at Jeremiah, who was staring back at him, also clearly trying to make sense of what was happening. “She and Barbara both have resources, I’m sure they could’ve paid off someone here or there to help break Lucius’s system. I just don’t understand why she took the things from the labs.  _ Why? _ ” 

Jeremiah sipped his drink. “Bruce.. I trust you. And I know you’re smart, but..” He stood up and went over to his computer. He pulled up the footage from the labs, then the release footage from the previous night which showed the thief accompanied by Freeze and Firefly. “..these cameras aren’t the best quality. There’s plenty of women in this city who could fit this description.”

“I just…  _ really  _ have a feeling it’s her. And if she’s with Freeze and Firefly it makes sense, right? Those two wouldn’t be caught dead in the same zip code, clearly they’re getting paid a large amount of money, and I don’t think Tabitha would pass that down, especially if she were given certain resources.”

“Bruce.. I think you’re jumping to conclusions here.” Jeremiah sat back down, hands clasped. “I.. I know that you’re anxious. You want to find her and have her brought in, I totally get it. But this isn’t a whole lot to go off of. The camera is bad quality, the lighting is awful, and you’re upset.” 

Bruce huffed softly. “Jim and Harvey are blind, I can’t believe that they can’t tell that it’s her.”

Jeremiah adjusted his tie. “Ok, now you’re starting to worry me. You haven’t actually seen her in-person in months, Bruce. You’re… You’re tired. This is consuming you, I need you to take a step back. You don’t look like you’ve slept. If you take this to Jim, he’ll demand some solid proof. And you just saying that it looks like her won’t cut it.”

The young billionaire pressed his hand to his face. “..Maybe I’m just tired. Or crazy.” 

Jeremiah started to pick up the takeout containers. “No, you’re not. And I’m not saying that it’s  _ not  _ her, I’m just saying that you don’t have actual evidence that it  _ is _ her.” 

“Either way, we have proof that  _ someone  _ is working with Freeze and Firefly. They stole a suit from the shop.”

Jeremiah took a breath. “One lone suit. The news didn’t say anything else? Have you been in contact with Jim?”

Bruce shook his head. “No, but clearly at the time the tailor hadn’t let on to what suit it was exactly. And.. I dunno how good our chances of actually finding out are. If these three were looking for a suit in particular, then the tailor is probably deep in their pockets. He had a specific suit that they commissioned him for.”

“Assuming that, the big question becomes why steal it in the middle of the night?” Jeremiah asked. “They could’ve just picked it up, the thief is an unknown person most likely, they could’ve just come by today or even yesterday in the middle of the day to pick it up.” 

“..Maybe they wanted to be found out.” 

Jeremiah makes a face. “Well, if that’s the case, then I’m worried even more. They  _ want  _ people to know what they’re doing? That’s never good.” A silence passed between them as Bruce tried to make a connection, anything that he could think of, but at this point anyone could’ve hired the three of them. Jeremiah spoke again. “Well, if you really think it’s Tabitha, maybe talk to Selina about it. She knows her better, I’m sure if you ask her she can help confirm or deny if it’s her on the footage. Once again, probably not enough for Jim, but it’s a start. Maybe she’ll give you another lead if she didn’t give you any yesterday. ..How’d that go, by the way?”

Bruce sat back in his chair, eyes meeting Jeremiah’s. “..We broke up.” 

Jeremiah’s brows shot up. “Wait, broke up? Hold on, I thought you went to talk to her about figuring out who the thief was.”

“I did. The conversation went another way, I told her I was through fighting with her, I called it off.” He gave him a little shrug. “...So, we’re not exactly on speaking terms right now.”

“Are.. you ok?” Jeremiah had worry in his eyes, his brows came together. 

“I actually feel.. fine. Maybe even good. I guess what you said really got to me. I couldn’t keep fighting with her all the time. We weren’t getting anywhere. And.. she was ready for things that I wasn’t.” Bruce replied simply. He felt different, that was for sure. 

“..Oh.”

Bruce cleared his throat, now things were just awkward and he knew that Jeremiah didn’t care about his relationship with Selina. “So, uh, no. I can’t talk to her about it. I doubt that she’d confirm if it were Tabitha or not, anyway. She’s not like that, Tabitha’s had her back for a while and she wouldn’t just betray a friend like that.”

“...So you think that it’s him?” 

Bruce looked over at Jeremiah, brows coming forget her. “What?” 

Jeremiah was tossing the rest of the containers away. His back was turned to Bruce and he looked over his shoulder at him. His glasses were sliding down his nose a little. “Do you think that the person that’s likely hiring them is Jerome?” 

Bruce stared at him for a moment. “I’m… not going to pretend that the thought didn’t cross my mind. But Jeremiah, that would be an entire operation. He would need people on the inside and outside…” He trailed off. “...Damn it.” 

“It’s possible, right?” Jeremiah asked. His voice suddenly had gone soft. “We both know how he is.. and Arkham’s security isn’t exactly the best. A favor here, a promise there, some cash the next day. He can bring in people easily… And- And if he’s coming back, then we’re both in danger-”

“Jeremiah, Jeremiah.” Bruce stood and walked up next to his friend. He looked into his eyes, they looked hazel in the light of the bunker. “You can’t jump to conclusions, you’ll just drive yourself mad. We have no idea what your brother is doing. I know you want to act fast, but you can’t have a knee-jerk reaction. Don’t do this to yourself.” 

Jeremiah slipped his glasses off and stared at them in his hand. He rubbed his eyes. “I’m in danger. You’re in danger. I have every reason to be freaking out. He’s going to  _ slaughter  _ us.” 

“I’ve stopped him before. I’ll do what I have to if he comes after me. But ultimately it’s out of our hands until something happens. And if I have to, I’ll help the GCPD stop him.”

Jeremiah put his glasses back on. “What about the vigilante? They can help, right? I mean, they’ve never faced Jerome, but they’ve been helping the city. I’m sure they’re going after the thief, they’ll go after Jerome when he gets out.”

Bruce leaned back against the work table. “You seem to have a lot of faith in the vigilante.” 

Jeremiah shrugged. “I guess I do, which is usually uncommon for me, as you know. They’ve done good so far. Haven’t killed anyone. It’s like what I was saying to Jim yesterday, they can’t go after them until they do something that’s actually bad. I know it didn’t exactly get through to him.”

“Why do you trust them so much?” Bruce crossed his arms habitually. “Galavan tried to help the city, even became mayor, and he was a complete hack. Remember the Balloonman? He killed off people in the lower-upper classes, he did it to help the city, but killing them was wrong. Oswald campaigned on helping the city and he’s a gangster. What puts the vigilante above them all?” 

Jeremiah held one of his hands in the other and seemed to be suddenly interested in his palm. “...I’m not sure. I just feel like what they’re doing is legit. They’re not seeking public approval, they’re blatantly operating outside of the law, they’re taking genuine risks. It’s different from everyone else. I feel like if they were going to kill someone they would’ve done it already.”

Bruce dropped his arms and relaxed his shoulders as Jeremiah spoke. “I’m just surprised, you don’t trust easily.” 

“Me, too. But until they do something bad, I’m not worried about them… Hold up, something’s on.” Jeremiah suddenly moved towards the small tv on one of the many tables in the room. Bruce turned and watched up pick up the remote to unmute it as one of the many newscasters came onto the screen. 

“..back from our brief break and we have an update on the break-in last night that we discussed earlier this morning. The GCPD has released news that the suit that was stolen looks like this..” A picture flashed up on the screen of a suit with a purple jacket and pants. There was a dark green shirt that went with it. It kind of looked like trash color-wise, but Bruce knew it was a high quality suit. And it just confirmed what he and Jeremiah had been worried about. “We ask that anyone who sees this suit or anyone wearing this suit immediately contact the GCPD.” The picture was dropped and it showed the female anchor again.

Jeremiah threw up his hands. “Ok, Bruce,  _ now  _ can we be worried?” 

Bruce felt doubt creeping up his chest. “Well, I mean, maybe Penguin wants to add some green to his wardrobe. Or maybe Nygma wants some purple.”

The anchor was cut off mid-sentence, looking past the camera to her crew in front of her. The audio was cut and there was a few seconds of silence before her eyes widened and Bruce could tell that she was saying something along the lines of, ‘What? Oh my god, are you serious?’ She turned back to the camera and the audio came back as she cleared her throat. “I.. I’m sorry, everyone, it.. we’ve just gotten word from the GCPD that.. Jonathan Crane has escaped Arkham Asylum.” 

Jeremiah gesticulated, and Bruce really thought he was about to chuck the remote across the room in shock and exasperation. Their eyes met. “Ok,  _ now  _ are you worried?!”

“Um.. yeah. Just a bit.” 

Jeremiah probably would’ve chuckled if they were kidding around, because they both knew that he knew that Bruce was understating what was going through his head, but instead he pressed his hand to his face. “Fucking  _ Scarecrow _ just got out of Arkham, Freeze and Firefly are working together… Bruce, this is.. I-” 

“You should come home with me.” The words came out entirely wrong, and Jeremiah looked at Bruce with wide eyes. Bruce quickly recovered. “I mean you should stay over at the manor if you’re worried, I can just take you over there if you don’t want to stay here. Jerome’s not predictable, the chances of him hitting up the manor again are minimal, and even though they already came here, too, I’m offering if you don’t want to be alone.”

Jeremiah stared at him for a few seconds, but eventually his shoulders dropped. “No, I should stay here, if he comes after us both then we should be split up, and I want to make sure this place is alright.”

Bruce nodded. “Sure, I understand. We’ll stay in touch, then.”

“Of course, maybe Jim will-”

Bruce hear his phone vibrating on the work table and he looked over at it. He picked it up and showed Jeremiah who was calling. He shrugged and answered it when Jeremiah just shrugged back. “Jim, what is it? Is Scarecrow really-?”

“Yes, Crane is  _ really  _ out of Arkham, Bruce. That’s why I’m calling. On top of the call from Arkham, we just got a call from Freeze. He gave us a time tonight and a location for where they’re going to strike next.”

“So he’s openly laying a trap for us and told you so that you’d come in with a team.” Jeremiah made a face upon hearing Bruce’s reply. 

“Yes, so we’re at a crossroads. Our own could be in serious danger if we go in, but on the other hand we have a higher chance of stopping whatever they’re planning and saving lives. If we sit back and do nothing, a lot of lives could be lost, and they could gain some important ground in this fight.” 

“It sounds like you’ve already made up your mind, why are you calling me about it?”

“Because if you’re willing to do this then I want you to be there. I know that it’s a lot to ask after these past few months of not involving you in police work, but if this is mounting up to a greater fight then I need you to be there. You know how to fight- and fight  _ well _ .” 

Well, so much for Bruce’s original plan, but he can adapt. “I’m in. Just tell me what we’re doing and when.”

“Come down to the station around 11 tonight, we’ll have a full plan by then. It’s a work-in-progress.” 

“Alright, I’ll see you then.” Bruce hung up and looked over at Jeremiah. “..I’m going to go help the GCPD tonight. Freeze called in and gave a location and time. I’ll be there.” 

“You’re walking straight into a trap, Bruce.” Jeremiah said softly, moving towards him. “I know you want to do what’s right, but this could be suicide!” 

“Yeah, I know it will be dangerous, but I can fight, and this could save plenty of lives.”

“Just promise me that you won’t be too reckless.”

***

Bruce stood at the edge of a group of GCPD officers, Jim and Harvey were just ahead of him to his left. Jim turned to address the group. Cop cars were behind them, but their sirens were silent as they drove over to the warehouse from the station. “You all remember the plan, stay together. If you feel light-headed, or smell something that could be a gas, retreat ASAP. I don’t want to lose any of you tonight. A team with me, B team with Bullock and Alvarez, and C team with Harper! Let’s go!” 

Bruce moved through the sea of people, going off to join up with Harper. She looked over at him and gave him a small smile. “Jim didn’t give you a gun?”

He shrugged. “They’re not really my style, I don’t need one.” Jim went in first with the A team, going straight ahead once they entered the warehouse. Harvey was next with the B team, who turned left. 

Harper called out to the C team. “Alright, we’re going right, remember to stick together! If anyone starts to drop off call it immediately!” Everyone drew their guns, and after all that time, it didn’t bother Bruce so much any longer. He followed Harper and a few officers in, turning right as they got into the warehouse. They all turned on flashlights, and Bruce’s first instinct was to search the walls for a power box. He felt along them for a few solid minutes while someone checked the other side, but he found nothing. Harper sighed. “God, I hope someone finds the lights. It’ll be a lot easier to do this when we’re not in the dark.”

They tried their best to navigate the warehouse, checking rooms and calling them out when they find nothing. After finding a larger room and splitting up into multiple groups to check each corner for anything, they met back up in the middle. Just as Bruce was getting back to the center he heard the radios in his smaller group go off. “This is Jones, C team. Langley and Varez, do you copy?”

There was no reply. “Langley and Varez, do you copy?” 

Jim’s voice came through. “Jones, talk to me.”

“Keith and I were with Varez and Langley, checking a part of this room we’re in. We turn around and they’re just  _ gone _ .”

“All teams, check your people, make sure everyone is accounted for.” Bruce came to the center of the room and the other small groups are meeting up as well. Harper quickly did a headcount in the dark. 

“C team only missing Langley and Varez.”

“Harv, what’ve you got?” Harper gestured for them all to follow her and they did, packing closer together now.    
  
After some radio silence, Jim came in again. “Harvey? Bullock, you there? B team, do you copy, I repeat, B team, do you copy?” Jim was starting to panic, and Bruce felt it in his chest, too. “C team, anything from B team on your end?”

“No, sir.” Harper replied sharply. “Do we continue with the plan?”

“...Yes, keep going, Harper. I’m going to call for backup. They must be in a dead zone in the warehouse somewhere.” 

“You got it, Captain.” 

The group began to move along, much more slowly now. Bruce felt like his eyes had hardly adjusted to the darkness at all during the time that they’d been there. Sure, they had the flashlights constantly going, but he figured that he’d be able to see at least a  _ little _ by himself. 

They came to a room and Bruce peeked inside of it. “Clear.” Once he turned around, he looked directly where the others had been standing less than a second ago-

And they were gone. 

Bruce made a bit of a face and continued off in the direction that they were going. After shining his flashlight and only seeing an empty hall, he felt the hair on the back of his neck stick straight up. He kept walking, eventually reaching stairs. He called out on his radio. “Jim? Harper? Can anyone hear me?”

  
Radio silence. 

Bruce reached the top of the stairs and spun around. His flashlight began to flicker, which sent a mix of annoyance and panic throughout him. “Come  _ on _ .” He tapped the flashlight and shook it a little, but suddenly the bulb was entirely out. He even turned it off and on again, but nothing, not even a flicker. “...Great.” 

He headed for a single, lone light that hung in the middle of the area that he was in. He at least kept the flashlight in his hand, it could be used as a weapon if he was ambushed, which is pretty much the only thing that he was expecting. 

What he wasn’t expecting, however, was the small, dark creature that flew right across his path, under the light over the dim bulb above him. He stopped completely and even seized up, eyes going wide and heart hammering in his chest. He stood there for a few moments, breathing rapidly. Bruce didn’t scare easily, he never did.  _ So why did that startle him so much?  _

He managed to get his breathing under control, along with his heart beat, which was still too high for his liking, and he continued to walk forward, under the light. All too soon, the light from the bulb behind him was gone, as if it had never been there in the first place. 

He continued down his path, eventually coming to an intersection with another hallway. He tried the radio again, but no one came through. Bruce rubbed his face, and suddenly he felt a chill fall over him, and it was as if the temperature of the room dropped at least ten degrees. He felt something settle in his stomach.  _ Dread?  _

He took a few steps forward, much more slowly this time, going against his better judgement. He heard was sounding like a step behind him, so he turned and squinted in the dark. “...Harper?” 

From what he could see (which really wasn’t much) he deduced that no one was there. It must’ve just been the building, the warehouses in Gotham were pretty much all built decades ago, and they’re in an older part of the city. 

Just as he turned around, chills fell over his entire body again, and this time he heard a new sound. 

“ _ Bruce _ ..” 

It didn’t sound like it came from behind him or in front of him. It sounded like it came from the air surrounding him, from all sides, enveloping him in a miniscule state of panic.  _ You’re just hearing things, it just happened to sound like your name. Find the exit, just get out as fast as you can.  _

So Bruce started walking along again, body tenser than normal. He heard another noise behind him, a thud, so he began to speed up. Then he heard another to his left, which made him jump like earlier, and he took off, running now. He tried to keep his breathing steady, he focused on the air filling and exiting his lungs.  _ You’re just being paranoid, you’re fine. Just get to the exit- _ __   
  


He suddenly felt himself falling, no,  _ plummeting  _ downward, and he let out a yell of surprise because of it. He didn’t remember the mission anymore. He didn’t remember why he was there. All he could think about was that someone was after him and had cornered him into a trap. He managed to curl up around himself and squeezed his eyes shut right before he hit what appeared to be solid ground. His left side took the impact, namely his shoulder, and he let out a grunt of pain. 

He blinked, then blinked again, trying to get the stars in his view away as he began to push himself up from the floor. He rubbed his eyes, and this time he realized a much brighter light was just a few feet away from him. He began to move towards it, legs feeling weak, when the light suddenly went out. He stopped in his tracks and looked around the room. There were a few dim bulbs hanging from the ceiling above him, but he couldn’t see the floor that he’d fallen from. He sighed and just decided to pick a direction to move in. He was getting nowhere fast, and he had lost most of his bearings at that point. 

Every step felt harder to take. Bruce felt heavy, like gravity had suddenly increased in the room by a factor of five. His lungs felt like they were being squeezed in his ribcage. He had to actually stop moving to focus on slowly breathing in and out. He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall when his knees began to shake. 

Suddenly there was light in front of his eyelids and he slowly opened his eyes again. He let out a cry of panic and instantly closed his eyes again when something small flew by him, a streak of dark darting in and out of the light once again. 

His arms were pressed in front of his chest like he was trying to protect himself from something. He pressed his back to the wall and slowly opened his eyes. Now he was really starting to panic. It just  _ felt  _ like someone was watching him. He couldn’t escape it. 

He took another breath to steel himself, then started walking slowly again. He turned a corner and a light came on in the hall in front of him. He blinked the spots from his eyes and squinted, staring at a figure who was standing there. He wasn’t sure whether to call out to them or not, but it didn’t matter because the person turned and made up his mind for him. “ _ Jim? _ ”

The captain looked back at him. He was wearing a suit that Bruce had seen him in countless times- but it wasn’t what he’d been wearing before they went into the warehouse. He also didn’t have a walkie on him. “Jim… what..?” Bruce stepped towards him. “What are you doing? Did you get separated from your team?” He felt that sense of uneasiness pass over him again, and it grew stronger as he moved to his friend. “Well, come on, someone is-”

“You really think that you’re so special, don’t you?”

Bruce stopped in his tracks, brows coming together. “What?”

“You think that running around the city at night, breaking the law, assaulting people, makes you a hero. You think you’re doing something good for this city.”

Bruce backed up, but he hit something large and hard. He turned and was met with a wall. “How the hell did..?”

“Jail time for vigilantism is upwards of a year. Tack on multiple cases of assault and you’ve got yourself some time at Blackgate..” Jim began to walk towards him. “No, even better, they’ll put you in Arkham. You’re not just a criminal, you’re mentally unstable. I’m sure your friend Jerome will love that.”

“Jim, come on, you’re not thinking straight. And- And you wouldn’t put me in  _ Arkham _ , I know you wouldn’t. I don’t belong there,  _ no one  _ belongs there. We both know how Arkham is.” Bruce heard his heartbeat in his ears, he heard the blood rushing. “This isn’t you-”

“Bruce, it’s so  _ obvious _ . You’re rich, you have the resources. The only question is will you give up those who help you? Just admit to all of it. Admit that Lucius and Alfred are in on it with you. I’m sure that Selina knows, too, right?” 

Bruce pushed Jim away from him when he got close enough. “You don’t have any proof! Stop pressuring me to confess, you just  _ want  _ me to admit it so that I do all the work for you! I’m not the vigilante!” 

He began to sprint down the hallway past Jim, hundreds of red flags in his mind going off. He didn’t hear Jim behind him, but he was met with something much worse. Another wall. He nearly ran into it, and after looking around and pressed his hands up against it. “No… no, no, no.. no, come on!” He looked around wildly, above his head. When he looked back to where he’d come from, there was no longer Jim and the dim hall, but two familiar redheads. Bruce’s eyes widened. “What are you two doing here? Miah, get the hell away from him!”

Jerome- no, it was Joker now- giggled. “Oh, Brucie, take another look.” He looked at Jeremiah again, and he realized that Jeremiah was chained to the floor by his ankles, and his hands were handcuffed. 

Bruce’s gaze slowly turned to Joker. “J… Joker, please. Whatever you want, it’s with me, not him-”

“Oh, I think that between the two of you, I’ve got everything that I’d ever want!” Joker slipped a knife from his knife and opened the blade, then wrapped his arms around Jeremiah and pulled him to his chest. The other twin shrieked, doing his best to pull Joker’s arm away, but he went still when the knife moved closer to his neck. “Well, well.. we sure are in quite the position, aren’t we? One small move and Broski is gonezo!” His grin stretched wide and he looked at Bruce with a wild expression. 

“Joker.. You don’t want to kill him. You know that you don’t. He’s your brother, he’s your twin, he’s your family-” 

“ _ Family _ ??” Joker cackled, throwing his head back. It echoed in Bruce’s ears, he felt it vibrate in the walls. It seemed to go on forever before Joker suddenly stopped. “No. We’re not  _ family _ . Our mother was not  _ family _ . The circus was not  _ family _ . He left me there to rot!” 

“He was scared, you  _ scared  _ him. You two were united against your mother, but you scared him even more, he felt like he had no choice!”

Joker faked a yawn. “This is so boring, let’s get down to the main event.” He pulled the knife away from Jeremiah, but instead pointed it towards Bruce, a warning to not come any closer. “Hmm.. let’s see, now.. Bruce, why is it that you’re afraid of bats?”

Bruce narrowed his eyes, feeling chills once again. “What?”

“Bats. You’re afraid of them. Don’t bother asking how I know, let’s just say that a little bird told me.” Joker shrugged, then waved the knife in his direction. “So.. why is it? And don’t bother trying to deny it, I know that you’re lying.”

“They’re just unsettling, but I’m not  _ afraid  _ of them.” The young billionaire grumbled. Just as he finished speaking, however, a shadow darted out from nowhere and streaked past him, and he instinctively put up his arms to shield himself. Joker laughed at him and Bruce lowered his arms. “I was  _ startled _ , that doesn’t count.”

Joker looked him up and down. “Hm.. no… no, I do believe that we can do better than that. Alright, let’s take it from the top, this time, let's really give it some  _ feeling _ .” He gave a general wave of his hand, and suddenly Bruce heard what sounded like a fan. He heard air moving quickly in different directions, it seems to come from all around them. Joker pressed a kiss to Jeremiah’s cheek, and Jeremiah looked like he was going to vomit. “I’m so sorry, brother, but... you know me, always the showman. Thanks for being such a lovely contributor to this! Ciao!” 

The sound was getting louder, and it was accompanied by what sounded like thousands of chirps, over and over again. “Miah, come on-” Just as Bruce stepped forward, another streak crossed his path, then another, and another, and he wished he didn’t know what those streaks were. They quickly surrounded him, forming a tightly knit circle around him. He couldn’t see through the swarm, they were too close to each other. He was frozen, his legs wouldn’t move, and even if they did, they would bump into the bats, and he wasn’t keen on them attacking him. A few gaps began to appear between a few of them, and Bruce was able to see Jeremiah staring right at him.

“Bruce?!”

“It’s ok, I’m going to get us out of here!” Bruce sounded even less confident than he felt, but he tried his best to remain optimistic for Jeremiah. “Just hold on-” He gasped softly when a bat flew by Jeremiah and scratched his cheek. 

“Agh!” Another one came by and hit him at the perfect angle to knock his glasses off. Bruce stared, horrified, as more bats came in, faster and faster, hitting Jeremiah or scratching him. Drops of blood slipped down his face as he yelled out in pain. Bruce’s voice caught in his chest as more bats began to swarm around Jeremiah. He watched him fall to the ground, crying out and yelling his name. 

The bats around Bruce moved to Jeremiah, and that snapped him into a new panic. “ _ Jeremiah! _ ” Bruce ran towards the swarm to chase them off, but they only began to attack him, scratching his face and flying into him. Eventually they gave up on that, but when he tried to scare them off or grab Jeremiah, they gave him no room. He physically couldn’t pull them off of him. Bruce was in a frenzy, trying to grab at them and pull them away, but they just came back or were replaced. None of them seemed to be hurt by him, and he actually was trying to do just that. Jeremiah was screaming still, and Bruce couldn’t even find the strength to yell back. 

Suddenly, Jeremiah wasn’t screaming. Bruce went still as the bats began to fly away, and his eyes remained trained on the spot where Jeremiah was under the creatures. One moment, he couldn’t see any of him, and the next he could see all of him, laying with his back to him. Bruce stepped forward. “M..Miah?”

He dropped to his knees and shook him gently. “It’s ok.. We can.. I can get us out of here..” He slowly turned Jeremiah over. When he saw his face, he closed his eyes, suddenly feeling nauseated. A wave hit him, and he felt his stomach muscles contract. He turned away, only to dry heave, as nothing came up. He swallowed thickly and looked back. Jeremiah’s face was covered in red scratches, blood dripping from places that Bruce didn’t even bother to identify. The most terrifying part was Jeremiah’s eyes- or  _ lack  _ of eyes, as it were. Bruce only saw blood and flesh where his sockets were, two empty sections, like someone had directly dug them out. Jeremiah wasn’t breathing, he was already cold when Bruce gently touched his cheek. “Jeremiah..?” He felt tears spring up in his eyes. “ _ Miah _ ..” 

He pulled Jeremiah to him and dropped his head on his shoulder, tears falling freely. “I’m so sorry.. I couldn’t… I couldn’t save you.. I was too.. I was..” Bruce closed his eyes, and he was falling again into blackness. 

His eyes opened, and he was met with a bright, blinding light. He heard a series of rapid, high-pitched beats as he looked around.  _ What? How did I get here? _

He looked down at his arms, there was something hooked up to him, he was in a white bed under white sheets. “This isn’t-”

Someone rushed in- he had a stethoscope around his neck and were in navy scrubs. He had a name tag that moved too fast for Bruce’s eyes to read. “Mr. Wayne, you’re awake.” He glanced between Bruce and a small monitor on wheels next to the bed. “Thank god, we were worried about you… levels looks normal… not like Crane’s at all..”

“Where am I?” Bruce tried to ask firmly, but his voice was weak due to a dry throat. His head was pounding, his body felt like it was strapped down, like someone was trying to contain him, but that wasn’t the case at all. 

“You’re in Gotham General Hospital. Can you tell me the date?”

“May.. May 15th. What happened? I was just…” He blinked hard and rubbed his eyes a few times. “I was with the GCPD on a call. What happened? Is Jim Gordon alright?” He looked at the nurse with wide eyes. “Jeremiah Valeska, is he alive?”

The nurse held up a hand. “Mr. Wayne, I need you to take a deep breath for me. Jim Gordon is alive, he came with you in the ambulance on the way here. As for Jeremiah Valeska, I have no idea. But we did contact your butler, Mr. Pennyworth. He’s talking with Jim out in the hallway now. I want to make sure that you’re stable before I let anyone in.”

“I need to see them now, I need to make sure that Jeremiah is alright. He- the last thing I remember-” 

“You exhibited signs similar to that of Jonathan Crane a few years ago when his father exposed him to a chemical formula that heightened his adrenal gland secretion. Only your levels didn’t last nearly as long. You’ve been steadily decreasing over the past few hours, but when the officers found you, you were as Crane had been when he came in.” The nurse shook his head. “We were really worried, you’ve been conconsious for a couple hours. So, based on what we know about Crane.. Whatever you remember last likely didn’t happen.” 

Bruce rubbed his face. “So.. the GCPD raid..?”

“I’ll get Jim in here to tell you about it, you two can put the pieces together much more easily than I could.”

  
  


He left Bruce alone in the room. Bruce had realized that the beeps were his heart rate, which was now considerably lower than it had been when he woke up. He felt his cheek for a scratch from one of the bats, only there wasn’t one. 

Bruce did his best to relax against the bed, and he tried to dig deep and really figure out what had happened. He looked up as Jim and Alfred entered the room. They both looked exhausted, Bruce could tell from context and the view from his window that it was the middle of the night, he hadn’t been out for that long. Alfred practically rushed over to his bedside and wrapped an arm around him, pulling Bruce to his jacket and dress shirt. One of Bruce’s arms slowly came up and hugged him back, and Alfred pulled away to look at him. “You nearly scared us to death there, Master Bruce.” 

“I’m sorry, it was a mess, I.. I don’t know what happened.” He looked over at Jim. “Really, this doesn’t make any sense.”

“What do you remember? I can fill in gaps.” Bruce could tell that Jim was seriously worried about him. He didn’t look like the Jim that Bruce was at all. 

“We went in… started searching the place. We lost sight of two people on C team.. then no one heard anything from B team. After a few minutes… I must’ve gotten separated from the group. One second they were all there, then no one was. I tried comms, nothing. Then… something was chasing me. The entire atmosphere in the warehouse changed. My light stopped working.. I somehow fell down at one point..” He stopped himself, that familiar sense of dread that he’d felt in the moment was coming back to him. He heard the monitor start to beep faster again. 

“It’s ok, it’s ok.” Jim said, and clearly he knew something that Bruce didn’t. “You.. You saw something, didn’t you?”

“Is Jeremiah ok?” Bruce asked softly. His body felt like lead, his head was full of something he couldn’t identify. 

“I.. would assume so. We haven’t called him or anything to let him know that you’re here-”

“Is Jerome still in Arkham?”

Jim glanced between Bruce and Alfred, a confused expression coming to his face. “Yeah, he is… Did you see him?”

“Yes, and he killed Jeremiah, which is why I need to know if he’s alive!” Bruce didn’t mean to raise his voice, but it all came tumbling out, and that feeling wasn’t going away. “I saw him die, Jim!”

Jim held up his hands. “Hey, I believe you, alright? I believe that that’s what you saw, but it wasn’t real. You were drugged and saw things that frightened you.”

“ _ What _ ?” This didn’t make any sense to Bruce, what was Jim on? “Jim, the hell are you talking about?” 

“Here.” Jim handed him his phone from the small table next to the bed. Bruce saw his keys and wallet, it was the things that had been in his pockets before he came to the hospital. “Call Jeremiah and speak to him yourself, I need to speak with the nurse.” 

Alfred followed Jim to the edge of the room as Bruce pulled up Jeremiah’s contact. “It’s still in his system? Aren’t all of your people completely free of it now?”

“Yeah, we were all checked over when we called the ambulance, everyone was completely fine aside from him. That tells me that he was exposed at a much higher rate or concentration..” 

“So, it was likely targeted, then.” 

“Well, we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves here.”

“Jim, mate, come on. It’s obvious. He’s had side effects that no one else has been experiencing, this was done on purpose.”

“Alright, let’s go with that. Then how did Crane know that Bruce would be there with us?”

“Well… he’s known to cross paths with Jerome, right? Jerome knows Bruce, he knows you would ask him and he knows that he wouldn’t say no. My question is why? Why do it?”

Bruce pressed Jeremiah’s contact and brought his phone up to his ear. He waited for the tone, starting to get anxious the longer that it went on for. Miah was a night owl, and even though he shouldn’t be awake at this hour, Bruce knew that he was usually a light sleeper and kept his phone on in case of emergencies. He heard him pick up and his sleepy, deep voice came through. “..Hello?” 

Bruce instantly relaxed, feeling a large weight lifted from him. “Miah, thank god you’re ok. I’m so sorry to wake you up, I was.. I’m sorry.” 

Miah yawned. “Mm? Bruce, what’s wrong? ...Wait, the GCPD thing… are you ok? Was someone hurt?”

“Well.. I think we’re all ok, Jim hasn’t said otherwise, but.. something happened to me. And I really needed to hear your voice and make sure that you were ok. I’m sorry for waking you up.”

“What happened? Did you guys catch Crane?”

“I don’t think so. My head is really fuzzy. Remember how his dad was a scientist, all that adrenaline stuff, trying to overcome fear? And Crane’s tried a few times to release a drug like that upon the city?” That feeling overcame Bruce once again, a sense of someone watching him, of something lurking outside his room door, outside the window. 

“Yeah, I-I do.. Wait, were you hit?”

Bruce rubbed his face. “I was, I’m sorry, I need to go. I can’t.. I just-” 

“No, no, don’t freak out, it’s ok. We’ll talk… soon, ok? Get some sleep, you must feel like shit. Good night.” Bruce pulled the flimsy hospital sheets up a little. 

“Thanks, Miah. Talk soon, good night.” 

Bruce ended the call and closed his eyes. “Alfred, the lights are bothering me, can you turn them off?”

“Of course, Master Bruce.” The light behind Bruce’s lids dimmed, and he was able to open his eyes without feeling pain. 

“Thanks, Alfred.” 

He felt Alfred sit next to them, and soon a nurse came in with a doctor, they checked Bruce’s vitals again and Bruce explained his symptoms to them. After some discussion they decided to send him down to the MRI for a test. Bruce groaned to himself when they announced that. The test could wait, he just wanted to sleep as soon as possible. But he didn’t fight it. He was able to walk pretty easily by himself, but the nurse put him in a wheelchair anyway. Bruce didn’t feel like being carted around like he was on display. He felt exposed in the tearable hospital gown, he felt cold in the MRI scanner. 

When he got back into his room, he did his best to curl up, he was freezing. Alfred clearly noticed and grabbed an extra blanket and draped it over him. Bruce looked up at him. “..I’m sorry.”

“Oh, no. Don’t you be giving me that ‘I’m sorry’ business right now, you hear?” Alfred replied, softly but sternly so that Bruce would listen. “This is not your fault, you were trying to do the right thing and were caught up in it. None of this is on you, mate. We dunno what really happened yet, and we don’t know what this gas has done and will do to you, so you’re just gonna sit tight while they figure it out, alright?”

“..Yes, Alfred. Thank you for staying with me, but you should really go home.” 

Alfred shook his head. “Absolutely not. I will stay here, and in the morning I’m gonna grab you some real breakfast and we’ll eat together, and I’m going to stay until those symptoms are essentially gone, got that?”

“...You know, if I order you to go and you don’t, technically that’s a fireable offense.” 

“Then consider me fired, because I’m not moving a muscle. Now, try to get some sleep. Unless it’s urgent and you need to know something, I’m not letting anyone in here.” 

“Good night, Alfred.” 

“Good night, Master B.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I can update this every three weeks easily!", he said, like a complete idiot.  
This chapter and its extreme delay were brought to you by: writer's block, PC building, school, fall games, an Overwatch addiction, and yours truly just being a general idiot.

Bruce tried to sleep. Initially, he was successful. He was so exhausted from the night’s events that it didn’t take him very long to drift off. The problems came from what followed. 

He suddenly sat bolt upright and was in another dark hallway. All rational thought was thrown out the window entirely, and he slowly pushed himself up to his feet. He glanced to his right- there were windows on that side of the hallway, curtains partially covering them and the moonbeams that came through, hitting the carpeted floor. There were doors on his left, and after doing a 360, Bruce realized exactly where he was. 

Home. 

His eyes adjusted more and more in the dark and he began to walk. He passed a portrait of him and his parents which told him that he was heading towards the stairs. What had happened? Has he been sleepwalking the whole time? Bruce didn’t sleepwalk. But maybe it was a one-time thing? Maybe he’d been trapped in a dream and it had just switched over- although going with the GCPD to the warehouse and being in the hospital felt pretty damn real. 

He turned the corner and was headed for the stairs when something caught his attention- soft laughter from down the hall. He instantly looked over and saw that light was pooling from the kitchen into the hall. He glanced at the stairs once more before heading towards the kitchen instead. As he got closer, he heard two very familiar voices, that of a male and a female. He stopped outside the doorway and tried to listen in on the conversation, but for some reason it sounded like his head was underwater when they spoke. 

He stepped into the light and peered into the kitchen. “Mom? Dad?”

The two older adults looked over at him. His father was seated at one of the stools at the counter, his mother leaning over the counter towards him. She looked over at him, a smile coming to her face. “Oh, Bruce! We were just talking about you, sorry, we didn’t mean to wake you.” 

He blinked in the kitchen light, looking between the two of them. “What.. What are you doing here?” This was wrong.  _ Something  _ was wrong. 

“Just chatting, Bruce. Do you need something?” His father asked nonchalantly. 

“You’re.. You’re not meant to be here.” Bruce replied. He looked down at himself- he was still  _ him _ , he was still an adult. This wasn’t a memory from his childhood. “Where..? How did I get here? How did  _ you _ get here-?”

“You know, I’ve always found that annoying about you, Bruce.” His mother cut in, her voice stern now. She was giving him ‘the look’, the one that always filled him with dread and made his throat close up. “You always ask questions. You never take things as they come, you never accept things for what they seem, you just... never shut up.”

“I’m..” He looked between them, voice wavering suddenly. It was hard to speak, he felt his heart beat harder in his chest, his lungs felt empty. “I’m sorry, I just-” 

“Just what? You just like sticking yourself in other people’s businesses? Taking on challenges that are too difficult for yourself? Being an inconvenience to other people?” His father stood up and took a step towards him, using  _ that _ tone of voice, like he’d broken a priceless vase running around the manor. “I mean, that’s all you were with the GCPD tonight- an inconvenience. You’re in the hospital because you failed to use your training properly.”

“It wasn’t like that, I was drugged and I couldn’t tell-” 

“Couldn’t tell what? That something wasn’t right? That you were in trouble?”

Bruce rubbed his arm. “I- I couldn’t. I’m not strong enough, I can’t exactly negate the effects of drugs like that, and Crane’s drug is specialized-”

“So what are you supposed to do if you get caught while you’re all dressed up as a vigilante? Just pray that no one discovers your identity?” His father was only a step or two away from him, hands shoved into his pockets. “You know what will happen if people find out that it’s you.”

Bruce crinkled his nose and looked away. “I’m well aware. I’m not an  _ idiot _ .” 

“Well, you’re  _ acting  _ like one. We didn’t raise you to be like this.” He snapped under his breath, turning away. “Come, dear, we don’t need to say anything else to him.” He linked arms with Bruce’s mother and the two started off out of the kitchen, snapping Bruce from his trance. 

He moved from his spot in the middle of the kitchen, following after them through the other entrance to the kitchen. “What? Where are you going? I still have so many things I need to ask you two!”

He turned down the hallway and realized that they were long gone, already far down it. “Wait! Dad! Mom!” He suddenly started to run, chasing after them with his arm stretched in front of them, reaching for them. The hallway started to bend and change in his peripheral vision. It became blurry and suddenly streaky as he ran, they suddenly seemed farther and farther away, the hallway lengthened by tenfold in a matter of seconds.

“Wait-  _ wait _ !” His lungs felt like they were on fire, he couldn’t even see his parents anymore. His vision became obscured from the sudden tears welling up in his eyes. “I’m sorry,  _ please _ ! Please-  _ you can’t leave me again _ ! I’m not ready to be alone again, I can’t- I  _ can’t _ -!” 

This time, Bruce shot up in the hospital bed, hyperventilation shaking his entire body. He blinked rapidly, a tear falling from his eye. He was in his hospital room, it was morning, some sunlight was leaking in through the window, uncommon for Gotham, even in May. His skin felt extremely cold, but his body felt like it was burning up. He shivered a little despite the heat.

It took him a few moments to register that someone was on his left, gently saying his name. He felt their hand rest lightly on his shoulder. He wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand and sniffled, looking over at his friend. “J.. Jeremiah.”

The redhead was searching Bruce’s face. “You.. You were mumbling in your sleep. I don’t know if that’s normal for you. I thought it was alright, but then you started to get pale, and I think you broke out into a cold sweat. Then your heart rate spiked, I didn’t know if I should-”

Bruce leaned in without warning and slipped his arms around Jeremiah, pulling him in close to him. They sat like that for a few seconds before Bruce felt Jeremiah’s arms around him. “Bruce..”

“You’re here. That’s what matters.” Bruce replied softly. He knew he was acting out of character for himself, but just a few hours ago he really thought Jeremiah had been killed and it was his fault. “Thank you.. For being here.” 

Bruce knew that Jeremiah wasn’t entirely socially inept, so the next question didn’t surprise him. “Can you tell me about what you saw? The.. hallucinations, right?” He pulled back from their hug and pushed up his glasses. 

Bruce cleared his throat, glancing down at himself. “I..” A humorless chuckle escaped him. “I watched you die.” 

Jeremiah shifted in his seat. “God, Bruce..”

“It felt so real. Everything felt real. Completely unlike a dream. One moment I was awake, with the group, the next I was suddenly alone, and I really thought that I was still awake. I had no indications that something had changed, and even then..” He shook his head and sat back, pressing the button on the chair so that he could sit up.

“It felt  _ too  _ real. You didn’t question anything that you normally would. The gas.. God, what is this guy using in his formula?” Jeremiah sat back as well, head tilting up towards the ceiling. 

“Earlier this morning when I first woke up, before I called you, Jim came in to check on me. He.. was talking with me and Alfred. I’m the only one who, as of that time, was still having symptoms. A few officers had hallucinations as well, but not of the same degree. And.. I’m sure that you know where I’m going with this.” Bruce looked at his phone for the time- 8:14. He’d gotten at least a few hours of sleep. 

Jeremiah looked over at him, clearly not amused. His presses his fingers to the side of his face. “You got a different dose than everyone else, which means that it was a targeted attack.” He leaned forward and pressed his hands to his face. “Oh my god, Bruce..” 

“It was on purpose.” Bruce scoffed. “And now look at me, I’m on 4 hours of sleep, Alfred and Jim are probably on less, I’m in the hospital, shaking like a fucking leaf.” He looked over at Jeremiah apologetically. “I called you in the middle of the night, got you all riled up and worried, and now you’re here visiting me, making sure I don’t lose my damn mind-”

“ _ Bruce _ .” Jeremiah placed his hand on the billionaire’s shoulder, silencing him quickly. “You have gone through a severe trauma. Clearly you have seen things that are damaging you, even in waking hours, and you’re worried about sleep now because it doesn’t seem to have gone away. You are going through something that our doctors can’t diagnose, and you feel weak- but you  _ aren’t _ . You’re getting angry at yourself. Bruce, having fears is normal, but I know that you don’t like to talk about them. What’s going on in your brain right now is bringing out those fears, probably fears you’ve buried without a second thought. I know you keep everything close, you only expose yourself when absolutely necessary. So please, don’t hide what you’re feeling. I’m asking you as your best friend, as a member of the scientific community, and as someone who wants to figure out how to stop this shit from happening to anyone else. From a medical perspective, they need everything on this. From a personal perspective.. Bruce.. It’s ok to feel things that are out of your control. It’s what makes you human.” 

Bruce stared at Jeremiah for a few moments, not expecting such a speech. “Jeremiah.. I’m just not used to this.”

“I know, and I’m not expecting you to spill  _ everything _ on your mind to me or anyone here. I’m asking you to try and just… let yourself be sad, or afraid, or angry. You’re not invincible, don’t tell me that you are.” 

Bruce’s brows eventually came together. “Miah.. where is all of this coming from suddenly? Have you been looking into this since I started telling you about all of Gotham’s insanity that you’ve missed?”

Jeremiah clasped his hands together, shrugging vaguely. “I know that the toxin brings out your greatest fears and nightmares. And I know that we’ve both experienced some very traumatic things in our lives.. So I’m just trying to put myself in your shoes. You said it yourself- you watched me  _ die _ . And I know you saw something about your parents that you don’t want or need to share with me. I know you’re worried about the city and will continue to worry until you die or leave. And we both know that the latter won’t happen. This is your home, Bruce, of course you can worry. And I’m sure you’ve seen and felt hundreds of other things that made you feel like running away. That made you feel fear. I know that I have.” He cleared his throat, realizing that he totally went off on a tangent on accident. “So.. what I mean to say is just.. I know if I were in your place I wouldn’t be holding up as well as you are.” 

Bruce pulled up the sheet and blanket on his bed. As he listened to Miah, he realized how cold he was. “Thanks for understanding. I’ll be ok.” 

“You better be, because if you can’t be Wayne Enterprises’s CEO, then I’m sure my ass will be kicked to the curb.” Jeremiah teased gently, a fond smile appearing on his face. 

“They won’t do that!” Bruce replied, brows raised. “You’re too important, your generators are your property, technically. I’ve made sure of that. If they lose you then they lose all of your work, and that’s a lot of money and paperwork that they really don’t want to have to go through.”

Jeremiah chuckled. “Ok, but I don’t want to work there if you’re not there.  _ You’re _ my boss, no one else. On top of being my friend, of course.”

Bruce was about to thank him again when there was a knock at the door. A new nurse came in this time, it was past change of shift, followed by Alfred, whose arms were full. Jeremiah stood up and moved to the wall, away from the bed so that he wasn’t in the nurse’s way. She had a clipboard and gave him a calm smile. “Mr. Wayne, how are you feeling this morning?” He was reading the monitor, looking at different vital signs that they were monitoring. “Your heart rate is a little high, how long have you been awake?”

“Uh, just a few minutes.” Bruce answered, looking between her and Jeremiah. “And I woke up from another hallucination- Jeremiah got here while I was still asleep and he said that my heart rate jumped and I broke out into a sweat in my sleep.”

She frowned. “I see..” She jotted something down on his chart, or whatever it was she was holding. “We’re going to do another MRI scan and compare your brain activity to that of this morning’s. We have no outward signs if you’ve started to improve or not, and that new hallucination tells me otherwise. I’m going to order it right away and we’ll have you down there in a few hours.” 

He nodded to her and she left, but as soon as the door was closed, that grin was nowhere to be seen on his face. He lifted his hands up and presses his face into them. He already was anxious to be out of the hospital, he couldn’t just sit here and wait for more hallucinations to come, he needed to be out there, finding more information about what was going on. He needed to be tracking down the thief. He needed to find blueprints of Arkham. 

Alfred came up next to the bed and rolled the table over so it hovered in front of Bruce. He placed a bag down onto it, along with tea. “Sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up, Jeremiah came in and I knew he would look out for you, so I popped out to grab us some food.” He produced another cup of tea for Jeremiah and held it out to him. Jeremiah pushed off from the wall and took it. 

“Alfred, I told you that I didn’t-” 

“Up, up, up. Don’t give me that attitude, mate, I can tell you have no intention of moving from this room until visiting hours are over or they drag you out of here, and I doubt you had breakfast before coming over.” He held out a bag to him and Jeremiah took it, sitting back down in the chair and placing his tea on the ground after a few sips. Alfred sat next to him with his own coffee and breakfast item. 

Bruce was presented with a bagel and a tiny tub of cream cheese, which he intended to use all of. As he prepared the bagel, he glanced over at his two closest friends at that point in his life. Two things hit him at once. Alfred went and got them all breakfast for a reason- to make these unfamiliar events just a bit more familiar. Bruce had been to Gotham General for many times (mostly for Alfred himself, even), but never because he was a patient. And every time that Alfred was here, Bruce was young and guilt-ridden over what happened. Pretty much every one of Alfred’s hospital visits had to do with protecting Bruce, or Bruce even  _ putting  _ him in that situation. So he would just sit there, worried that his friend- no, his  _ father _ \- would never fully recover. 

This was their first hospital visit where something truly out of their control happened and the other wasn’t involved. On top of that, Bruce knew that Alfred knew him better than he ever let on. No, he never knew all of him, but he knew most of him, including some parts he never showed the world. Bruce could tell that Alfred was worried about him feeling overwhelmed, sitting down and having a normal meal together was his way of trying to make the hospital stay less disruptive. 

Bruce also realized that this might be the first time Jeremiah had breakfast with someone else aside from Ecco in a long time. The last time was probably at school, but even then Bruce knew that Miah was always a loner, he’d told him precisely that so many times. Before then it likely would’ve been when he was little, at the circus. Perhaps he and Jerome ate breakfast together before they grew apart, before their lives began to take opposite paths. Maybe they tried to work out those easy puzzles on the backs of cereal boxes together. 

Bruce took a small bite of bagel and glanced out the window, surprised at how bright it was outside. “Did either of you talk to Jim? I’m sure he hasn’t slept all night.” 

Alfred nodded. “Yeah, he popped by before I went out, wanted to check up on you. He said they had no traces for where Crane went. They checked the warehouse and it was abandoned, no physical trace of him at all. Which means he probably was never in the building, but likely outside of it feeding the gas into the system and slowly drugging you all.” 

“That holds up, but how did he single out and target me?” Bruce’s brows came together. “How was he able to do that without gassing everyone else in the same manner? He must’ve come in the warehouse, maybe when I went into a room he sprayed me and I just don’t remember, and I continued on like everything was fine until the hallucinations kicked in.”

“Well, if he was in there, he’s not now, and he left no clues or anything behind.” 

Jeremiah frowned. “So, what, he cut the power to the warehouse, slowly gassed you guys to freak everyone else out, singled you out and sprayed you or otherwise increased your dosage at a rapid rate, and slipped out? Of a giant warehouse with no lights with thirty cops in there? You guys couldn’t see anything, any sort of light would have alerted  _ someone _ .” 

Bruce shrugged. “I think we would’ve just assumed that it was one of us, why would Crane draw attention to himself with a light source? We all stayed together in groups of three, if one person was alone they would’ve been easy to spot.” 

“Roof access?”

“I doubt there’s a fire escape ladder leading all the way up the building to the exterior roof in an old warehouse like that. How would he have gotten down? Unless our suspicions of him not working alone are true- then someone could’ve put up a ladder for him, I guess.” Bruce sipped his tea, eyes moving to Alfred for a brief moment. “No offense.. sounds like a lousy escape to me. Then again, I don’t associate extreme grace with Scarecrow.” 

“Look, I don’t think the specifics are important here, I think the  _ why  _ is what’s important.” Alfred said, leaning forward. “We can worry about details later, right now, we need to focus on why. Why would he target you specifically? He could’ve taken out a large portion of the GCPD for a few days by giving you all very large doses to force hospitalization across the board, but he didn’t. He only attempted to stop and hurt  _ you _ .”

“And I don’t think it was a botched assassination attempt, either.” Bruce took another bite of his bagel. “Crane could’ve just outright killed me, I don’t think he would’ve wasted his toxin on me just for it to lead to my death.”

“So it’s likely that he was truly just trying to slow you down, or make a statement for others to see.” Jeremiah stared at some random point in the room, his words started to come out slowly. “This has my brother written all over it. He and Crane have worked together, he’s smart enough to break Crane out of Arkham without anyone noticing until it’s too late, all from the comfort of his own cell. He asked Crane to target you for a specific reason. He’s trying to go after you again.” He stood and started to pace the room as the tension in all three of them rose. “He’s still  _ obsessed  _ with you..”

“Right now, we can’t do anything about it. So we should do our best not to get ourselves riled up and anxious about it.” Alfred said, glancing at Bruce, who nodded silently. 

“Yes, Jerome is still in Arkham, he’s going to wait before making another move himself.” Bruce tapped the cheap plastic tray in front of him. “..But I do wonder… Why is he trying to slow me down  _ now _ ? I can only assume that he’s preparing for something much bigger than this. He wants me out of the equation so that I don’t stop him when he starts to execute more steps.” 

Jeremiah looked over. “Great, so he  _ does  _ plan on breaking himself out. Just what we need. It’s been a few  _ months  _ and he’s ready to set another plan in motion. I swear to god, knowing him, he must’ve been planning since day one.”

“And just imagine how many Arkham patients he’s won over with his promises of changing the city, making it a madhouse for them all to rule?” Alfred asked. “He’s a master at manipulation, and he knows that he’ll need more support backing him than all those other times if he actually wants to succeed in this. Who knows how many people are already behind him again? And what about the other rogues who are freed- Freeze and Firefly? Even Riddler and Penguin will deal with him if the price is right.” 

“He also didn’t have the vigilante to worry about last time.” Bruce said suddenly. He glanced up from his food to the two other men. “I’m sure he’s watched the news. There’s someone out there that can be a threat to him now, and it’s probably got him all excited. He’s never been one to back down from a challenge. And someone operating outside of the GCPD jurisdiction, becoming more and more well-known to Gotham? He might feel threatened. Even if they’re on opposite sides, someone else is taking attention away from him.”

Jeremiah huffed. “Then let’s just hope that the vigilante knows what they’re doing, then.”

***

Convincing Bruce’s nurse and doctor to let him go was no easy feat. After another MRI scan, they easily concluded that Bruce still had high activity in his amygdala, where essentially the sensation of fear was first being processed. They wanted to keep him another night to monitor his vitals and wait for more hallucinations to come to him, but Bruce didn’t want to be in the hospital any longer. He needed to get out, he felt like he was being caged in. 

He wasn’t exactly a danger to himself or others, and had no immediate health risks, so technically the hospital couldn’t keep him there. Alfred of course signed off on the papers, telling them that Bruce was in his care until things changed, and that if another serious episode happened again, they would come back to the hospital. Jeremiah silently attempted to remove himself from the situation, but Bruce caught him right before he was going to put on his clothes. 

“Jeremiah, where are you going?”

The redhead pushed up his glasses. “Uh, work, actually. I have some things I need to take care of, and I can’t just sit around and wait for Jerome to break out of Arkham, now can I? I’ll be safer at work for now.”

Bruce glanced out the door where Alfred was talking to a nurse. “You can spend the night at the manor, if you’d like. You don’t have to be alone if you’re anxious about Jerome breaking out.” 

Jeremiah shook his head. “No, no, Bruce, I can’t. You’re- You’re still recovering, and I don’t want to inconvenience you when you should be resting. That should be your first priority, not thinking about me and keeping me safe. What we were talking about earlier… it was just ideas, things to keep in mind in the coming weeks, but we don’t know if any of it actually will happen.”

“That doesn’t mean that you’re not worried about it.” Bruce said softly. “That doesn’t mean that you  _ shouldn’t _ worry about it.” He grabbed his clothes and stepped towards the bathroom. “I’m just letting you know that I’m offering. It’s your choice, but the manor is always open to you.”

***

As soon as Bruce stepped out of the car, he began to walk swiftly from the garage into the house. “Alfred, I’m going to work on tracking down blueprints for Arkham, they shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

Alfred was right behind him. “Blueprints? Bruce, you should be recovering, go lie down for a bit.”

“I am not going to just sit and let Jerome come after the city.” Bruce looked back at him before heading for the study. “I need to find Arkham blueprints so that I can break in myself, as well as figure out how Crane got out.”

“Break in yourself? Bruce, you’re seriously not going to do what I think you are.” 

Bruce opened up the cave and looked over at him. “This is what I need to do, Alfred.” 

“You can’t just go in the middle of the bloody night to interrogate him! Do you realize how dangerous that is? Even if security doesn’t catch you, he’ll  _ know _ it’s you.” Alfred sighed, his voice dropping from upset to concerned. “Bruce, just... Please think about this. Like, really think about this. We don’t know what he’s planning, he could easily kill you in there.”

“But he won’t, especially if he knows that it’s me.” Bruce let out a soft huff. “And if he tries to tell people, no one is going to believe him at Arkham. They’ll all just think that he’s lying to get what he wants. Now, I am going to look for Arkham plans, probably look into the tailor shop that was robbed, and plan for tonight. I can’t do anything about the robberies as of yet, but more places will be hit up, I’m sure. People will show themselves. It won’t be long.”

Bruce turned without another word and made his way down the steps to the cave. He hit the light as he went, causing an increase in chatter from the bats as a few of them scattered upon his presence and the sudden brightness. He came down to his desk and set to work.

Finding Arkham plans was easier than he thought it would be. No one exactly had any of these records locked up tightly. He figured he would get onto the roof and go through the air ducts, then drop down into Jerome’s room directly. Security was loose at Arkham, everyone knew that. Hell, Jerome probably even convinced the staff there to keep any security near his cell to a minimum. 

Next came the task of looking up the tailor shop. Bruce decided that he would have to talk to Jim about what the shop owner had told them. The shop only did custom-made suits, which meant that the tailor came into direct contact with the person who ordered the suit that was stolen. But still, why steal it, then? Just to avoid paying for it? Always a possibility. The rogues were all ruthless. If Bruce knew the color of the suit, then he knew he could narrow down who it might be for. 

Bruce drifted off to sleep at some point. He leaned against the desk, and before he knew it he was in a dream again. Bats were swarming around him, blocking his view of anything and everything, like a black fog. He heard Jeremiah calling out his name, so he tried to shout over the bats. “Jeremiah! Jeremiah, I’m here!” 

He moved to the edge of his circle, where the bat swarm started. He felt drawn to it, drawn to the other side. Without thinking, he shot out his arm into the bats, they smacked into him for a few seconds before he felt someone grab his hand on the other side and pull him through the ring. 

He found himself looking at Jeremiah, their hands clasped tightly. Jeremiah blinked at him, chest rising and falling somewhat rapidly. “What are you doing? Bruce, you can’t go to Arkham! Are you crazy?” 

Bruce made a bit of a face. “Well, I never said that I wasn’t-”

“You’re not. You’re just being ridiculous, that’s what.” Jeremiah crossed his arms. “You really think you’re gonna sneak in there, talk to him, get what you want, and get out? Without any fuss around it? Bruce, this is  _ Jerome _ , we’re talking about. He’s going to realize that it’s you and go ballistic. So, I think that you should stay in the manor. If I come over and spend the night, what if I wake up and you’re gone and I find the cave? Hm?”

Bruce closed his eyes and huffed. He doesn’t know how or when to tell Jeremiah that he’s the vigilante. He has to eventually, he knows that. The only problem is that if Jeremiah knows, his life will be put in more danger. He’ll be another target. “I.. yeah. I know you’ll figure it out.. it’ll upset you.” Jeremiah could easily break off their friendship over it.  _ Why didn’t you tell me? Do you really not trust me enough with this?  _

“I’m going to tell you… soon. Soon, I swear.”

“Well, you’d better. Now, I’m going to..” Jeremiah drifted off, and Bruce was just about to ask what was wrong when he heard something in the distance faintly, a voice, calling out to him. 

He suddenly felt someone gently shaking him and he opened his eyes, face pressed into his arms which were on his desk. Alfred looked down at him. “You alright, mate? Don’t tell me, another hallucination?”

Bruce pushed himself off of his desk. “I don’t think so, just a dream this time. Sorry, I guess I drifted off, what’s up? How long was I asleep for?”

“Dunno, but it’s half past six, roughly. And well, I’m down here to tell you about dinner and let you know that Jeremiah is here.” 

“Wait, he’s  _ here _ ?” Bruce stood and stretched, scrubbing his hand over his face. 

“Yes, I’ve got him waiting in the kitchen for dinner while I fetch you. He said he thought about what you told him at the hospital. Got home after doing some work at the labs and felt like he should be with you in case something happened. Come on, let’s go, then.” 

Bruce followed Alfred and closed up the cave, heading down the hall first. Just as they reached the kitchen, Alfred turned down the other way without a word, and Bruce was alone. He glanced after him, then decided to head into the kitchen by himself. Jeremiah was sitting down at the table, which was already completely set. “Jeremiah, hi.” 

The redhead looked over and stood up. “Bruce, heh, hi. I’m.. I’m sorry about not giving you any notice, I should’ve waited for you to reply before I came over here. I just.. I was antsy, I guess.” 

Bruce blinked. “Oh, uh. I was really busy with some things, I guess I must’ve not seen my phone light up, I’m sorry. Don’t feel bad, I’m just glad that you’re here.”

“Well, Alfred just told me to wait here for you, so..” Jeremiah sat back down, and Bruce moved around the table to his place, which just happened to be right next to Jeremiah. 

They waited for a few minutes before something rather obvious hit Bruce. “Alfred’s not coming back, come on, we can eat.” 

Jeremiah’s brows shot up, he glanced over the entryways of the kitchen. “He’s not? Well, alright. I guess it’s just the two of us, then.”

Bruce grabbed the serving spoon and dug it into their meal: chef’s salad. “I guess so.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, local idiot here, thanks so much for reading my chapter! I am so sorry for the delays you guys, at this point I'm not going to bother to promise that I'll make three weeks again, I'm just going to hope that I get the next chapter out sometime in the very beginning of January. This one was really tough to write, it's at a low point in the story. I didn't want to throw Bruce back into actual action because I knew it wouldn't make much sense, so I just put in a lot of discussion and downtime for this one. Also, I think I'm just going to stick with 5-6.5k words per chapter? I know I said I was going to chunk out longer chapters, but sometimes that gets the flow off for me, and one of my closest friends said I probably shouldn't make them too long because most people like to read a chapter in one sitting. Please let me know what you guys think about that, and once again, thank you guys for being patient! Until next time!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After two months, my block was suddenly lifted! I'm not dead!

“So… hey.” 

Bruce chuckled softly at Jeremiah’s awkwardness, he felt it in the air. “Hey.”

“Not that I’m expecting a miracle, but how are you feeling? You already look better than you did in the hospital… Then again, I guess everyone looks like shit in the hospital, don’t they?”

Bruce grabbed one of the salad dressings and shook it up. “Yeah, and like most people, I have really shitty memories from hospitals. And everything is so.. bland. When I go into a hospital.. I can just feel the ill people around me, and everything brings back bad memories. All the times that Alfred has been in there because of me.. I hate hospitals.”

“Plus, you’re not exactly one for being cooped up in a small room with just a window while the world turns around you.” Jeremiah replied softly, taking the dressing once Bruce was finished with it. 

The younger man shrugged, a hint of a smile on his face. “You know me, I’m not a pacifist. Not anymore. I guess you could tell that I was anxious to get out, huh?”

Jeremiah nodded around a forkful of salad. “Takes one to know one. I’m the same way, but it’s because I’m  _ not  _ used to being in them. At all. Never went to one while in the circus, and I never got sick enough or hurt enough to go to a hospital when I was a teenager. Then I turned 18, and part of covering my tracks was making sure that the name Jeremiah Valeska never came up in any databases that my brother could get into. So I’m not even in the system at any medical facilities. Xander Wilde is, but… that was entirely through Ecco. I’ve never stepped into a doctor’s office.” 

Bruce tilted his head. “Ok, that all makes sense, but… Ecco just did everything for you? Described your symptoms and the doctor prescribed you something that would hopefully work?”

“Yes, sometimes if they were difficult I would call her, put on a voice mod, and answer the nurse’s and doctor’s questions. A remote appointment.” 

“So you never were injured enough to warrant a hospital visit? Like breaking a bone or having to get blood work done? No surgeries?”

Jeremiah shook his head. “Nope… Hell, I learned how to do stitches on  _ myself _ . I’ve never needed to use the skill, but… it could save me in a pinch if it needed to hold for a few hours. I’m sure I’m better on another person.” He suddenly scoffed. “I can’t believe I lived like that for so long.” 

“Isn’t that why you’re so pale? Sounds like you’ve hardly left the bunker for these past few years after college.” 

That suddenly got a rise out of Jeremiah, and he giggled into his hand, cheeks lifting up and causing his eyes to narrow a bit behind those thick glasses. Bruce found himself smiling a little while he gazed at him. “Yes.. yes, I suppose being inside for so long  _ didn’t  _ help my complexion. And I didn’t want direct UV lamp light to damage my skin in a serious way. Still… I definitely had days where I just wanted to be outside for a few minutes. Get some fresh air, feel the sun if it was a rare day. Oh, if it snowed hard enough I would go out and enjoy it, I did a lot of shoveling mostly, but I felt like the snow helped conceal me better than the normal environment did. But.. you’re not wrong. I had plenty of weeks where I didn’t see any sun or get any natural light at all. I guess that’s why I’m such a shut-in still.” 

“Well.. you came all the way out here. So that’s progress, right?” Bruce tried, which made Jeremiah nod. 

“I suppose so. And.. holding a job, going out with you.. it all counts for something, right?”

“Exactly. Progression, not regression. I’m sure you’ll always be an introvert, that’s just who you are, but you can at least get acclimated to society fully.”

“I’m trying.” Jeremiah’s shouldered dropped a bit as he continued to eat. “Sometimes I worry, though.”

“About?”

“Me.. my brother coming after me again. Building something up and then getting killed or hurt- or worse, getting someone else like  _ you _ killed or hurt.” 

Bruce huffed softly. “Well, if I get hurt because of Jerome…  _ Joker _ , then I highly doubt it will be because of you. He’s hurt me before, but as long as I can get back up again, I can’t let it get to me too much.” 

Jeremiah gazed over at him, and Bruce couldn’t help but stare back. Was there something on his face? Did he look groggy from just having woken up from a nap and being in the hospital? “...You always know what to say, Bruce.”

The billionaire blinked, suddenly snapping out of his trance. “How so?”

“You.. I tell you what’s bothering me… I tell you about my past… and you always know what to say to make me feel better. You always say something that makes me relax, that makes me feel better about myself. You never seem to run out of the hope and the idea that things will work out. That you and others can do things now and in the future that can help make up for the past.” He paused for a few seconds. “And.. you haven’t given up on helping me. Even though you’ve witnessed firsthand what my brother can do. You don’t treat me like I’m him, you treat me like I’m… well, another person. I guess after all these weeks of being friends with you.. I’m still just confused as to how you hold onto hope so well. It probably comes from the fact that.. I do the complete opposite of that.” 

Bruce pushed his salad around on his plate. “If I let it get to me.. if I give up... then I know that there’s no coming back from that. I’ve… walked that line for so long, I know that if I get pulled under it’ll take me. I can’t give in. I have to hope. I have to hope that people can be good, that your brother can get true help, that the system will fix itself in time, that I’ll be strong enough to stand if I need to. I’ll do whatever I can to help the city. In any way that I can.” 

Jeremiah glanced between Bruce and a random spot on the wall. “You mean.. through Wayne Enterprises.” 

“Yes, legal action. People will be held responsible. Your housing for the Narrows and near the docks is going to help lift up those who are stuck in a loop at the bottom. Once we boost the city, I can try to put more funding into Arkham. That will help anyone who is mentally ill, like your brother and the Riddler. Penguin even needs some help, I think.” 

“A stable businessman on the outside, but an unstable mobster on the inside. Yeah, even I can tell that.” Jeremiah replied. “Oswald is tough, he’s hidden behind muscle and money, and he’ll never admit to needing help. Then again, my brother wouldn’t either. He’ll just say that he’s sane for the first time in his life, that the rest of us are insane and just need that..  _ Part of us  _ to be unlocked to reach our full potential.” 

“Do you think he actually means that?”

“I dunno. Part of me thinks that the whole ‘I’m so insane that I’m sane’ bit is stupid and he knows it, but I can’t help but wonder if he actually feels that way… Or if he wants to just plunge the city into chaos. I don’t even think he wants power, he just wants mass hysteria to bring the city down, whether or not he becomes top dog is irrelevant to him.”

“He.. certainly has high expectations set out for himself.” Bruce ate some more salad. “And with the robberies recently, on top of Scarecrow breaking out suddenly and coming back… His expectations must be higher than ever.” 

“Well, the vigilante will help bring him down, I’m sure.” Jeremiah said matter-of-factly, taking a sip of water and stabbing more of the salad onto his fork. 

Bruce blinked. “Ok.. I gotta ask, you were talking a good game about the vigilante at the station with Jim.. but are you serious? It’s… someone acting outside of the law, running around and stopping murders.”

“And some rapes, and some robberies, and some kidnappings, and some drug circles.” Jeremiah replied again, like it was the most simple thing in the world. “Well, I’m not sure about that one, that was just speculation because no one gave testimony that the vigilante was the one, but I’m pretty sure it was.”

Bruce couldn’t help but make a bit of a face, for more than one reason. “I… guess we don’t really talk about them enough for me to realize how much you idolize them.” 

“I don’t idolize them!” Jeremiah replied, a blush coming to his cheeks that Bruce wasn’t sure if he was supposed to see or not. “Well… I think we all wish that we were the person out there fighting criminals and being a one-man army while the GCPD sits there spinning around because they have no support or manpower. Bruce, come on, don’t you wish you were the vigilante?”

Bruce slowly shook his head. “Not.. really. I did my part, yeah, and I still go on raids with the GCPD. But after seeing Jerome, after all the chaos that the city has gone through, after  _ last night _ … I’ll just stick to this. The legal stuff where I can directly help a large group of people. And I can’t do it without you. The city… doesn’t need a billionaire brat running around trying to play hero, it needs a fair businessman to raise wages and drop employment through legal action. It needs funding for childcare, for our poor public schools, for the good people in the system to be able to shine with more funding. It needs Wayne Enterprises to help fund scientific research, particularly medical research, to help raise the average lifespan and to give vaccines to people or provide medication when something bad happens. Using my fists to take on the big guys… no. That was the teen me, the young me, the wild me. Being an adult and being able to see more into the works of my company has shown me that this is my role. This is my thing. This is what I’m supposed to do. I’ll let the vigilante run around rooftops and risk their life in terms of physicality and legality.” 

Jeremiah narrowed his eyes for a few seconds, before suddenly shrugging, throwing up his hands a little and relaxing his gaze. “Alright, then. Suit yourself. But… You  _ do  _ support them, don’t you?”

Bruce looked over at him. “Jeremiah, of course I do. They’ve saved people, pissed of Penguin, given people some hope. And they’re risking their life in so many ways. If the GCPD catches them… their identity will be revealed, and they’ll go to prison. They’re risking everything.”

Jeremiah nodded. “...Jim can’t come around to it, though.” 

“I know that he’s torn, you heard him at the GCPD. Cops working with someone blatantly breaking the law? I mean… yes, this is Gotham, and Jim’s done it before with Penguin and others who have actually done harm, but I think Jim is truly trying to shut that down. No more slips through the cracks or bending the system. He wants it tried-and-true.” 

“Well, I guess that he feels as if them working with crooked people inspired the vigilante- and will inspire more. So he wants to put a stop to it as soon as he can, and maybe even catch them to make an example of them.” Jeremiah trailed off, he ended up mumbling the last sentence. 

Bruce tapped his plate and ate some more. “We shouldn’t get wrapped up in it, the vigilante, the criminals…” 

“It’s hard not to. Especially now that _we’ve_ been hit.” 

“...I know.” Bruce huffed. “But for now… maybe we should try not to. At least, for tonight?”

Jeremiah licked his lips, and after a moment he nodded, going back to the meal. “Yes, yes. It’s just getting both of us down, we’re both tired, we should rest it for tonight. Let’s talk of something else.”

An awkward silence of sorts fell over the two of them, both trying to figure out what to talk about that wasn’t related to events in the city. Bruce didn’t want to think about work, either, and he knew that Jeremiah was likely too tired to think about it as well. 

“Thank you for coming here.” Bruce said softly, glancing over to him. “Whether it’s because you’re worried about me or just feel unsafe by yourself… I appreciate you coming over.” 

The corners of Jeremiah’s lips turned up. “It initially was because I was worried about you, but… yes, I went home, thought about you and how I left you at the hospital… The bunker… I don’t know, forgive me for rambling.”

Bruce tilted his head. “What about it?”

“Just… maybe it’s because Ecco is no longer with me, so I’m all alone in there, but… it feels too big now. It hasn’t felt like a fortress for safety ever since Jerome found me. It’s just acres and acres of concrete in the middle of nowhere- and I only use like five rooms in the entire place.”

“Including the bathroom?” Bruce teased.    
  


“Yeah! Including the bathroom!” Jeremiah nodded, brows rising as he grinned from Bruce’s little poke. “I built it and… it was all for nothing!”

“You should move out, then.” Bruce said simply. “I know plenty of real estate people that I can set you up with, you can get a place out here- or even a luxury apartment right in the city- just let me know when to make calls.” 

“But… what about the bunker?” 

Bruce’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Huh… well, even if you take everything and leave it barren… you can leave it to have the property. Hell, you can build a mcmansion on the land! It’s the middle of nowhere, but there’s plenty of room! And if you build it right you won’t have to knock down that many trees!”

Jeremiah chuckled softly. “Yes, you’re right. I can always build on top of it, just destroy the part that is exposed and have an entrance to it from directly inside my house that I can use for storms. ...Storms… wait, refuge! I can donate the bunker and the land and it can be a homeless shelter!” 

Bruce blinked, staring at him. “That’s… actually a kind of feasible idea. They can do some tweaking and make it much more navigable so that people don’t get lost.” 

“Exactly! ...Wait, I was actually kind of kidding, but do you really think it could work?” Jeremiah looked extremely happy at the thought, eyes bright as he glanced at Bruce. 

“I mean… I don’t see why not. We’ll just have to do a  _ lot  _ of talking with public officials. But I genuinely don’t see why it wouldn’t work. Think of how many people they can give shelter and food and water to. I mean, the bunker is  _ massive _ .” 

Jeremiah shrugged. “And.. Jerome already knows where I am. I can’t hide from the world any longer, it has no use to me. Now it’s just… just a hunk of concrete full of empty memories.” He looked to Bruce and laughed gently at his slightly confused look. “Ah, sorry, Bruce. I didn’t mean to say such a dark and depressing line, I know that that’s your job.” 

“Hey! Not  _ everything  _ that I say is depressing!” Bruce grinned. “But yes, it was just surprising coming from you. You seem so attached to the bunker, but... I’m proud that you’re deciding to move onto a new part of your life.” 

“I can’t stay like this forever, you’re right. It’s time to get out into the world, just like you always say.” 

The rest of dinner passed without any disruptions, Jeremiah insisted on helping Bruce clean up the table and the kitchen. There wasn’t much to clean up anyway, considering Alfred was the neatest man in all of Gotham. 

As soon as the two were finished clearing everything up, Alfred strode into the kitchen. “Ah, Master Bruce, Mr. Valeska, glad to see that you two had a nice supper. Mr. Valeska, will you be spending the night with us?”

Jeremiah’s cheeks suddenly began to flare up. “Well, I- uh… I did… bring a bag with some things in case I wanted to. But only if it won’t be a burden to you two.” 

“Oh, it won’t be an issue at all.” Bruce reassured him, then glanced over to Alfred. “Alfred?”

“Right away, Master Bruce.” The butler curtly left to head down the hall to the stairs. 

“Alfred will get everything for you settled.” Bruce said, turning to him again. “Let’s go out to your car to grab your bag.” 

Bruce led Jeremiah out of the kitchen and to the front door. He pulled it open and they were both hit with cool late spring air. Alfred had yet to turn on the front porch lights. Jeremiah quickly made his way over to his car and unlocked it with his keys. He reached in and pulled out a duffle bag from the passenger seat. Bruce’s eyes began to lift upward, gazing at the sky. Through broken clouds, he could see the hints of sunset, oranges and pinks upon the edge of the horizon. 

“...I sure as hell did miss this.”

Bruce suddenly blinked and looked over to Jeremiah, whose gaze was matching his. “Sunsets?”

Jeremiah nodded, in the low light of twilight, Bruce could make out a patch of the setting sun reflected in the lenses of his glasses. “God, yeah. Sunset and sunrise are both just so peaceful… The balance between the end and the beginning of life… All that sappy romantic stuff that I won’t get into.” He chuckled lightly. “Being in the bunker… no windows, no sun, no sunset or sunrise. First time I’d seen the sunset properly in years was the day we met, when Jerome was captured. It’s just nice to watch it again with someone.” 

“Do you want to stay out until it’s completely finished?” Bruce asked softly. He felt like his voice might shatter the air. 

“Hah, no, I’m good. Got plenty to look forward to.” 

Bruce led Jeremiah back inside, and the two went into the study instead. Bruce went in and out of the study, setting some water on the kettle for tea. When it sounded that it was ready, Bruce went back in, fixing a cup for himself and Jeremiah. He set aside one for Alfred, then carried the two mugs back into the study. Jeremiah grinned and held out his hands from his place on the couch, taking it from him. “Thanks, I need to start drinking more tea. Caffeine addiction is right around the corner.” 

Bruce shrugged and sat down next to him. “No problem. And yes, you should. I’ve seen how many cups you have each day, and how much you have in your kitchen at work and in the bunker!” 

“Ok, so maybe I’ve already hit caffeine addiction.” Jeremiah chuckled. “This seems like a good substitute, though.” 

“Thanks. Alfred’s better at making tea, though. He has the magic touch, been doing it for a very long time. I just learned from watching him.” Bruce sipped his jasmine tea, Jeremiah had gone with a peach oolong. 

“Bruce… I hate to pry, but… are you sure that you’re ok now that you and Selina are… you know..? Isn’t the whole thing with breakups that they’re very hard?” 

Bruce looked over at Jeremiah, not expecting him to bring up Selina so suddenly. “Oh. Well, yes, typically breakups can be a hard thing to face. Most people go into a relationship hoping that the other person will be ‘The One’. And it’s broken off when one party realizes that that isn’t the case. Or it’s mutual if you’re lucky. Selina and I… I told you, we just wanted different things. I didn’t want to end it badly, but I know I hurt her. I doubt we’ll ever be friends again.” 

Jeremiah rested his mug on his thigh. “That sucks. You’ve been friends for a very long time.” 

“Honestly, it does suck.” Bruce made a bit of a face, thinking of their first meeting, how he began to have real feelings for her. “But there were plenty of warning signs that I overlooked because I liked her. Because she was smart and pretty, because… I dunno, she was the badass street girl and I was the sheltered rich kid who’d never faced adventure before, or something stupid like that.” He huffed. “We tried… and we  _ really  _ tried this time. But I think I knew deep down from the start that it was doomed to fail. I was already moving on, I’d grown more, my feelings for her weren’t serious, and they just dwindled more and more. I wish I could’ve done it a better way, I didn’t want to go out with a fight, or make her hate me. I didn’t just break us up, I broke our  _ friendship  _ up. I couldn’t save her, I never could. ...Maybe it is best that she hates me now. Sad, pitiful, even, but it’s true. She’s happy being on the streets, stealing or whatever it is she’ll be doing. If she joins  _ them _ then... all I can do is hope that she doesn’t fall too deep. I can’t control her.” 

Jeremiah’s brows had raised while Bruce spoke. “That was awfully poetic.” 

Bruce smirked. “Analogies and metaphors for hope can get quite redundant, I need to find new material to work with.” 

“Well, if she’s not ‘The One’ as you put it, then she’s not. You’re a good person, Bruce. If you ever decide to have a long term partner, you won’t have any trouble finding someone.” Jeremiah picked up his mug and sipped the hot tea, Bruce watched him in the dim lighting of the study. He honestly wasn’t sure how to take that. Perhaps Jeremiah was just trying to help soften the blow at losing Selina, not that Bruce was really feeling it. 

“Thank you, I could say the same about you.”

Jeremiah chuckled. “Bruce, I appreciate it, but no. You couldn’t.” 

“Well, whether or not I  _ supposedly  _ could or couldn’t do something has yet to stop me.” Bruce glanced back to his tea, he could feel Jeremiah smile next to him. 

***

It grew later in the night as the two made small talk and finished their tea. Eventually Bruce led Jeremiah to the guest room for him and left him there, pretending to break off to turn in as well. He did quite the opposite, going back into the study and heading down into the cave. He turned on his computer and glanced at the plans of Arkham from earlier. He really wanted to go down to the station to try and talk to Jim. He decided to text Lucius before planning his next move. ‘I’ve thought about the suit, we’ll talk tomorrow.’ He needed a proper suit, talking to Jim in-person now would be too great of a risk. 

So, now what? 

Bruce turned to the news. He hadn’t heard or watched anything for a few hours, ever since Jeremiah had come over. He hadn’t seen Alfred either since he left the kitchen. 

His eyes widened. 

“...biggest story from today, Jerome Valeska, AKA the Joker has broken out of Arkham Asylum. This is quickly following the break out of Jonathan Crane, AKA Scarecrow. Valeska is also joined by Jervis Tetch, known as the Mad Hatter.” 

Bruce pressed his hand to his face. Well, there was his answer. Not exactly the answer that he wanted, but an answer nonetheless. 

“GCPD officers have been working closely with Arkham security to track down the three men, especially considering how closely the three of them have worked together in the past. We advise all citizens to remain inside their homes throughout the night hours, and the GCPD asks that any sightings of these men be reported directly…”

Bruce blocked out the remainder of the broadcast as he prepared to set out for the night. Scarecrow. Mad Hatter. Joker. All three were on the loose, and Jerome had purposefully escaped with Tetch. They clearly snuck out Crane early for a reason, maybe to just rattle the city and the Arkham guards. Jerome’s methods seemed like madness, but Bruce knew that underneath he really was smarter than people thought he was. 

Bruce finished suiting up and was soon driving into the city. He had no leads to go on, and going into the city with nothing was admittedly a stupid idea, but there was no way he could just sit back knowing that Joker had escaped. He hadn’t seen him since his arrest back in February, it had been three months since they’d laid eyes on each other. 

Bruce tuned into the police scanner as he drove. Any lead would be better than nothing. Whether it was Joker or the thief striking again- hell, he’d take a simple mugging at this point- Bruce knew he was ready for something. He had gathered many dots that didn’t seem to connect to each other at all, but he wanted them to. It was just easier when things lined up and made sense, when it was all part of some large scheme or plan. When each event led to one thing or another. 

But as much as he wanted to try and speculate to make sense of it all, he knew he couldn’t. He had too many gaps. And what if Crane and Tetch were ditching Jerome after last time with the Legion of Horribles flopping? And Jerome could just as easily stab either of them in the back as well. 

“Got a call coming in, not 911.”

“Send it through. This is Detective Alvarez at the GCPD, do you have information regarding the recent Arkham breakout?”

“Hm… yes, I suppose that I  _ do  _ have some very interesting information for you, Detective.” 

Oh  _ shit _ . 

Bruce turned up the scanner, the signal became clearer and clearer as he sped towards the bridge. Bruce felt the air go still in the car, the soft scuffling on the GCPD’s side of the radio. 

“Valeska? What the hell are you playing at?” 

Bruce suppressed a shudder when he heard that familiar low chuckle. Joker sounded like he was close to cackling. “Ehehe.. well, you see… I may or may not have in my possession something- or rather, some _ one _ \- that you all would be very interested to know about.”

Complete silence. 

“Uh…. Alvie? Ya still there?” Jerome sounded genuinely confused, as if he truly thought that Alvarez had hung up. 

“Don’t play games with us, Valeska. Just tell us your location-”

“Well, not to take a page from the jolly green jackass, but: I’m protected by one who has no sight. I’m an inconvenience for the wealthy and a final stop before the big house… what am I?”

“Valeska-”

“Nope, that’s all that you’re getting from me, Alvie! Anyway, I gotta dash. Gotta make a dent in this town!” Alvarez was about to protest in the silence that followed, but the voice came back over the radio. Any cheeriness that it had was sapped out suddenly, like someone else was speaking. “Oh, and by the way. It’s  _ Joker _ !”

The scanner went silent, Bruce was certain that the station must have been in chaos, Alvarez running to talk to Jim and get the entire night shift on the case. Every officer was likely being pulled from any simpler cases to work on finding Joker. Bruce just hoped that they would figure out the riddle pretty fast, considering he was already speeding to its answer. 

Bruce focused on the streets, Gotham hadn’t settled down too much for the night, so he was forced to go a less direct route. Bruce heard Alvarez call it in to Jim, but he wasn’t paying attention. He was focusing on what Joker had said- he was clearly trying to mock Riddle with a riddle of his own. But he wouldn’t have called it in for fun, obviously it was a clue. He wanted to be found. 

Bruce knew it was a trap of some kind, or at the very least Joker wanted to make a scene. He wanted them to come, it was an invitation. But  _ why _ ?

He turned a corner and drifted into an alley, parking his car far enough in to keep it out of sight. He climbed the fence that he’d stopped in front of and jumped over to a nearby fire escape, then pulled himself up onto the roof. Gotham Courthouse stood tall and proud just across the street. Bruce didn’t see any security goons outside of it, or even Firefly to try and block his path. It couldn’t be more obvious:  _ he wants people to see what’s inside _ . 

The street was almost empty luckily, but Bruce wasn’t going to waltz through the front door. He made his way over to the street corner and jumped down to the sidewalk. After making sure that the coast was clear, he dashed across so that he was on the same side of the street at the courthouse. He went around the side of the nearest building and found a fire escape to use, and then he was off, running across the rooftops to enter through the back of the courthouse. He kept glancing behind him, looking for signs of cop cars or sirens, but there was just the normal city traffic. 

Soon, he was able to drop down and ran to the back of the courthouse. There was an area designed like a loading dock, where prisoners at Blackgate or Arkham were taken to be let in through the back of the building. Bruce jogged down the inset pavement that led to this area and he simply went over the gate blocking his way. It was clear that Joker had taken out the courthouse’s security, no one was on duty at the checkpoints, and Bruce knew that he was in line of sight of at least one camera. He came to the back of the courthouse, met with a security panel and what was basically a large garage door. Bruce stepped over to the security panel to examine it, but suddenly he heard a loud noise and looked up. His body tensed once the garage door started to pull up without warning. 

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t our  _ favorite  _ vigilante!” Bruce quickly found a speak on the wall, which was mounted right under a tiny camera. “Ah, the strong silent type, eh? No worries, I’m sure that I’ll be doing most of the talking anyway!”

Bruce ducked below the door and headed for the door into the building. He went up a small set of stairs that brought him to the door, and he was unsurprised to find it unlocked. He gently closed it behind him after making sure that the immediate area was clear. He crouched down and slowly headed towards the courtrooms. After he passed a few of them, he began to hear somewhat-hushed voices echoing down the hall. 

“No, no, don’t start, you dolt! Don’t you remember the plan from earlier?”

“Sorry, Boss..”

“Heya, Boss, uh.. Does this vigilante fella even got a name?”

“Well I sure hope so! I want all of Gotham to hear it!”

Underlying the banter between Joker and his lackeys, Bruce could’ve sworn that he heard frantic muffled sounds coming from somewhere in the same room. 

The doors to this courtroom were wide open, it was near the front of the courthouse as well. It might as well have had an ‘Enter’ sign plastered on it in neon green. Bruce crept inside, crouching lower to the ground and doing his best to hide in the back behind the benches. 

“When’s he gonna be here, anyway?”   
  


“Soon, soon! But don’t worry about him, you know the drill!”

“...What if he comes in here full guns a’blazin’?” 

“Then  _ subdue  _ him, you nincompoop! Do whatever you have to, but make sure that he’s still  _ awake _ .”

“...What about the cops-?”

Suddenly a loud  _ bang _ rang throughout the courtroom, causing Bruce to almost jump and tense up. He couldn’t tell where exactly it came from, he wasn’t peeking out to try and find Joker, but he knew that it was from behind him towards the front. 

“Now, anyone else have any questions? ...No? Good.”   
  


The panicked sounds were still muffled, but louder now that Bruce was in the room. He heard someone let out a long sigh. “Ugh… ok, fine. No one can hear you anyway, I might as well..” Bruce heard a ripping noise, then a male voice let out a cry of pain. “Oh, please, I’m sure your cases have given you headaches worse than that.”

“Help, help! Help me-!”

“Tsk, Har _ vey _ , come on, now. You really think I’d rip off your tape, knowing that you’d scream, if I were worried about people hearing you? There’s  _ no one  _ here to save you.” 

Bruce slowly turned and looked around the edge of the bench he was behind. He slinked around the side, moving over to the jury’s bench in complete silence. He kneeled down and glanced around- now that he was closer he could see more armed henchmen. He turned and moved to the other end of the bench, closer to the head of the room, and when he looked up at the judge’s bench, there was a particularly skinny man standing over someone else in a chair. 

“Joker, I am  _ not  _ your enemy here. They refused me when I asked to take your case, I  _ begged _ them to give you another shot-”

“I didn’t  _ want  _ someone to take my case. I didn’t  _ want  _ another shot. This has nothing to do with anything between  _ us _ , Dent. Hell… this isn’t even really about  _ you _ . But, you’re my best bet. Couldn’t really go with anyone else on this one.”

Joker swayed a little, Bruce could clearly see Harvey Dent’s terrified, yet firm expression. Dent’s hands were handcuffed and resting on his lap, his legs were tied to the chair. “Joker, think about what you’re doing for a minute-”

“You know, I’ve done quite a  _ lot _ of thinking while in Arkham. A lot of planning. And it’s brought us to this moment here!” Bruce could practically feel his grin without even having to see his face. “...Well, I think I’ve actually waited long enough. Sadly, due to a change of plans, our in-studio audience is going to be a lot smaller than originally anticipated.” Joke pulled a hood over Harvey’s head, and he let out a yell of protest. “Oh, hush, don’t you worry, now. You’ll only be under there for a few more seconds, I promise.” Harvey gave a muffled yell in response. 

Joker stepped away from the judge’s podium, pointing to someone that Bruce couldn’t see. “Carl, stand by!” There was some rustling, then a soft beep. “Tigress! Hatter! What’s your status? We need to pick up the pace!”

A voice that Bruce recognized to be Tabitha Galavan’s came out from where Joker was standing. “Good thing I’m ahead of schedule, then. The station is locked down, we’re ready.” Bruce leaned out a hair farther from his spot, Joker’s back was turned to him, one hand was holding up something in front of him, the other was tapping his hip impatiently. 

“Lovely. Tetch, what’ve you got for me?”

“Oh, we found the tower at the top of the stair, we’re all set to give Gotham  _ quite  _ the scare!” Jervis Tetch’s voice came through the air, along with some static. Radios for communication, of  _ course _ .

“Excellent! Lay low until it blows over, I’ll meet all of you back at HQ!” Joker looked over at someone- Carl, Bruce figured- who was clearly standing in the middle of the room. “Carl, you’re up!”

“Alright, Boss… three, two, one..” 

Joker cleared his throat and spun around, spreading his arms wide. “Hello, Gotham! So sorry to interrupt your late-night soap operas and cartoon reruns, but I’ve got big plans that need tending to, and this broadcast is just step one!” He looked over at a door on the opposite side of the room to Bruce, bringing the radio back up to his face. “Bring it in, boys!” 

A silence filled the room, until the door burst open, and two men came in, pushing in a cart with what looked like a large pot on top of it. They stopped it in the center of the room, Bruce had a clear view of one of the corners. Bruce glanced between Dent and the scene happening before him. He saw that the two men entering the room both had large guns strapped to their backs, and he was pretty sure that Joker and Carl were both packing as well. And that only covered the men that he  _ knew  _ were in there. He wasn’t worried about himself, the situation was a lot more difficult with Harvey being front and center where he could easily be shot up in a second. He only had one smoke grenade with him- a prototype from Lucius.  _ Brilliant, you’re walking into a firefight with just your fists.  _

“Now, I’m sure that you’re all wondering about my friend in the chair up here!” Joker pulled the sack off of Dent’s head, then quickly pulled out a gun from his jacket pocket and pointed it to Harvey. Harvey froze instantly, eyes darting to the gun at his temple. One of the men came up and sliced the ropes tying Harvey’s legs to the chair, then darted away. Joker grinned at what Bruce figured was Carl and a camera. “Up.”

Dent slowly rose. “Joker… Joker, please..” 

“ _ Please  _ what? Give you a little kiss and read you a bedtime story?” The goons chuckled at that. “Come on.” Bruce ducked back around the bench as Joker pulled Dent down from the judge’s area, they were facing his hiding spot as they stepped down. He waited a few seconds and peeked back out, seeing that Harvey’s ankles were bound together with a larger pair of handcuffs, so he had to rapidly shuffle along to even move at a slow walk. 

“There’s still hope… your brother-”

Bruce knew that that was one of the  _ last  _ things that Harvey should’ve said as soon as the words left his lips. A shot rang out and he heard Harvey yell. Joker had stopped them and hissed into Harvey’s ear. “Don’t you  _ dare  _ bring up that unbearable asswipe, you understand? I’m sure that he’s tucked into his cozy little bed as we speak, hiding from the world after getting  _ banged  _ by that bitch Bruce Wayne!” 

Bruce tried his best to ignore his stomach suddenly jumping. 

Joker cleared his throat, and any rage in his voice was replaced by showman joy. “Anyways, here we are, Gotham, the main event! Now, I’m sure that you’re all get quite the lovely view of that liquid in that pot over there, and I’m sure you’re all asking yourselves, ‘Joker, what do you have for your next trick?’ and oh, boy, have I got quite the headliner!”

Bruce darted to the next bench while Joker spoke, this time he had a better angle for the center of the room. He was able to see Joker and Dent standing in front of the pot, their backs towards him. “You see, I’m going to make Harvey Dent’s face  _ disappear _ !”

“ _ Freeze! _ ”

The room suddenly was in motion. Joker grabbed Dent and began to push his face towards the liquid, causing Dent to start screaming. Bruce glanced over to the main doors to see GCPD officers pouring in, guns trained on Joker and his goons. He had a split moment to realize that all of the focus was on the center of the room, not him. 

“Don’t shoot!”

“He has a hostage!”

“We don’t have a clear shot!”

Bruce suddenly grabbed his one smoke grenade and pressed the button, then chucked it, purposefully aiming for Joker himself. He heard Dent scream, he suddenly smelled something burning. The grenade smacked Joker in the back of the head, and he promptly turned and gasped. “You  _ made _ -!”

Bruce ran directly at him, suddenly confident of the outcome of the situation. Joker’s brows shot up and he turned and ran, dropping Dent in the process. Bruce grabbed Dent around the middle and pulled him away from the liquid, crashing with him onto the ground. “ _ Aaaaghh!!! My face, my face!! Aaaaahh! _ ” 

“Follow Joker, follow Joker!” Bruce heard and felt the rumble of police boots running past him and Harvey on the floor, but he knew at least someone would be staying behind to watch over him. “Dispatch, I need an ambulance to the courthouse, I repeat, I need an ambulance to the courthouse, we have a civilian with severe injuries.” 

“Mr. Dent?” Bruce slipped out from under Dent and turned him over. He gasped and leapt up from the floor, staring down at the man laying there. 

The half of his face that had been exposed to the liquid was charred, burned- no, the skin had  _ melted _ . Bruce stepped back, unable to take his eyes off of the flesh and exposed bone. An officer knelt down next to Harvey, attempting to check his injury, but Harvey began to scream and lash out once they got close to him. Bruce slowly looked up, not surprised to find two officers with their guns pointed at him. He glanced around: the rest of the officers had chased Joker and his goons out of a door. His eyes found the camera a few feet away, pointed directly at Dent. 

“Hands where I can see them.” 

Bruce looked at the officer closer to him. His eyes wandered the room again and he slowly began to raise his hands. “I’m not your enemy here-”

“I don’t give a damn about whether you’re my enemy or not. Just because you’re the enemy of Joker doesn’t mean that you’re our friend.” She stepped towards him, so he stepped back, which caused the other officer to yell at him. 

Bruce glanced at the one who had yelled. His hands were shaking, which could mean nerves or an easy trigger finger. Bruce wasn’t in the mood to feel a partial bullet impact tonight. “He-”

Suddenly there was a rush of air, or at least, it seemed like air, but Bruce knew what it really was. The smoke grenade was setting off finally, and Bruce was already running before it fully deployed. All three officers began to shoot at him, more and more blindly as he fled the courtroom while it filled with smoke. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! Woohoo, I'm not dead, I'm just a moron who had serious writer's block and has been focusing on gaming instead of writing! I really wish I had the drive to update more frequently, these past few months have been really busy for me so hopefully now with a more open schedule I can get down to writing more of this lovely piece. I need to finish this one before I start anything else, and I'm holding myself to actually finishing this fic. Anyway, thank you guys for being patient, I hope this wasn't a letdown for all of the down time. Comments and kudos always appreciated! <3


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Imagine actually updating a fic in a timely manner, couldn't be me!

It took the third set of knocks to bring Bruce out of his sleep. He rolled over and pushed himself up into a sitting position, rubbing at his eyes. “Come in.” 

It was Alfred, who came in with a mug of some sort. Bruce blinked over at him as he shut the door and approached his bed. Bruce glanced at the clock and went back to rubbing his eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sleep in.”

“You sleeping in a bit later than usual isn’t exactly the biggest of my concerns as of right now.” Alfred sat down on the edge of the bed. He held out the mug and Bruce took it carefully. Bruce looked down into the dark liquid and sniffed it, then blew across the top gently. “Jeremiah and I have been watching the morning news.”

Bruce lightly tapped the mug. “...And?”

“He’s… not been caught.” 

The young man let out a breath and pressed the mug against his forehead. “Was  _ anyone _ caught?”

“No, Joker set off some smoke bombs outside the courthouse, GCPD couldn’t track any of them.”

Bruce’s throat suddenly felt tight, he sipped some tea to try and soothe it, but nothing was helping. “How’s Mr. Dent?” The wavering in his voice was mostly masked by how gravely and low it was from sleep, but he knew that Alfred would pick up on it. 

“He was critical last night, but they’ve stabilized him at Gotham General. They haven’t released many details to the public, but… I’m sure you have one of the better understandings of the entire situation.”

Bruce stared down at his tea. “...It’s my fault, Alfred.” 

“Do  _ not  _ put this on yourself, Bruce.  _ Please _ .” 

His eyes finally lifted to meet Alfred’s. “If I had been faster and more prepared I could’ve stopped Joker from… you weren’t there, you don’t know what happened.”

“I don’t, but I know that if you could’ve done something sooner, you would’ve.” Alfred sighed. “Come on, let’s get you some breakfast. Can’t help anyone or yourself on an empty stomach.” 

Alfred patted his shoulder and then promptly left, shutting the door behind him. Bruce set his tea on his bedside table and looked at his phone. There was a text from Lucius: ‘I can come by sometime after lunch today if you’re not busy.’

‘Thanks.’

Bruce made his way over to the bathroom and splashed water on his face. He looked into his reflection and was pleased to find that he didn’t look like a complete trainwreck. He looked a bit tired, but other than that, he didn’t look like he’d been up for most of the night, replaying the scene in the courthouse over and over in his head. 

He put some real clothes on, then grabbed his tea and headed down the hall with it. He sipped it down some before tackling the stairs. As he reached the bottom floor, he heard someone in the kitchen, probably Alfred, either cleaning up or cooking. He passed the doorway to the kitchen and opted to head right into the study instead, where Jeremiah was watching the news. As soon as Bruce pushed the door open gently to come inside, Jeremiah practically shot up like a rocket. 

Jeremiah looked at him with wide eyes, he sounded like he was nervous or scared. “Bruce, are you ok?” His best friend walked toward him swiftly and held out one of his arms, as if he were going to hug Bruce. That arm quickly dropped and Jeremiah suddenly stopped short in front of Bruce. 

Bruce blinked at him, brows raised. “Um… yes? I’m sorry, I slept in because I had a bad night. I couldn’t get to sleep, and when I finally did, I had some pretty shitty nightmares. I’m better now, I think it was a lasting effect from the gas.”

Jeremiah swallowed thickly, the look on his face and his tone turned from anxiety to what sounded like relief to Bruce. “Oh… damn, I’m sorry to hear that. I didn’t hear you up at all, though, I was basically knocked out as soon as my head hit the pillow. Do you.. need to talk about it?” 

“I’m fine, don’t worry.” Bruce sipped his tea and gestured to the TV. “What’s on the news?”

The ginger rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh… so… don’t freak out, but… my brother broke out of Arkham.” 

Bruce looked over at the screen. “...I get the feeling that you’re about to tell me that that’s the  _ least  _ of our worries right now.”

Jeremiah huffed, turning to look at the screen as well. “Not quite, but… he struck last night. He was at the courthouse, and… he… mutilated Harvey Dent’s face.”

Bruce’s eyebrows shot up. “How bad is it? Is Harvey alive?” He moved over to the couch and sat down, leaning forward on his knees as he watched the advertisements between reports. Jeremiah sat next to him and turned the volume up a little bit. 

“He’s alive, stable at the hospital. His face is pretty messed up, though.” Jeremiah huffed. “It was… some sort of acid, he just took Dent’s head and-”

“Yeah, yeah, I… I get the picture.” If only Jeremiah realized just how true that was. The news channel intro came on after a particularly bad ad from LexCorp. 

“Welcome back and good morning. To those of you just tuning in, we have a breaking story over events that went down at Gotham Courthouse last night just a little before midnight. The Joker had kidnapped Harvey Dent, one of Gotham’s best and most trusted lawyers. He assaulted Dent, but we believe that if it hadn’t been for the intervention of GCPD officers and… and the masked vigilante who has been seen throughout the city for the past few weeks, Joker would’ve likely killed him. Now, I warn everyone watching that the following video may be very disturbing to most viewers. It was taken directly from a video camera and broadcasted across all Gotham television frequencies last night, take a look.”

The feed cut to a video with mute colors and lines of static running across it. Bruce stared at the screen, pretending to be interested, until he heard Joker. 

_ “I’m sure that he’s tucked into his cozy little bed as we speak, hiding from the world after getting banged by that bitch Bruce Wayne!”  _

Bruce felt his cheeks flush as Jeremiah audibly gasped and shifted next to him. “O-Oh.”

He looked over at Jeremiah. “..I’m sure that he knew that we would both see this, he was just trying to get a rise out of us.”

Or maybe he thought that they were really together. 

“Um… right.” Jeremiah was pink, from his neck all the way up to his ears. 

  
  


Bruce tried to push it from his mind and instead focused back on the video. He tried his best to analyze what could be seen in the video, but it wasn’t much more than what he’d already seen and figured out. The feed was trained directly on the vat of acid that had been wheeled in, and Joker and Harvey were coming into view. That’s when all Hell broke loose. 

The guns of the GCPD officers being drawn, Harvey screaming, Joker looking around wildly, Bruce’s smoke grenade smacking him. Despite the camera quality, anyone watching would’ve easily known at least a couple of the events that were suddenly happening. The camera hit the ground and Joker fled, his goons and most of the GCPD following him. Bruce came into view, knocking Dent to the ground. 

“The vigilante… they were the one to actually  _ save  _ Dent..” Jeremiah mumbled to the room. Bruce watched as he leapt up after seeing what happened to Dent- he honestly looked pretty damn graceful for having just seen half of a man’s face melted off. 

The video ended after the smoke grenade went off and the vigilante seemingly disappeared. The feed went back to the anchor and she was giving updates on Harvey, reminding everyone that he was alive and stable, but was not going to make any comments on the incident for the time being. Bruce finished his tea. “...I just don’t understand why Joker targeted Dent.”

Jeremiah shook his head. “How’s the GCPD going to tackle this? Joker is erratic, he doesn’t have patterns, he just does what he wants.” 

“He broadcasted this so that people would see it, he wants people to be afraid. He wants them to fear him, he’s trying to cause panic in the city.” 

Jeremiah stood. “Well, we can't do anything about it right now. Bruce, when do you think Wayne Enterprises will be open again?”

Bruce stood and turned off the television. “Not sure, yet, you need to go in for something?”

“Mostly I just want to get back into working to help normalize everything, I think. Plus I miss the lab.” 

“I’ll make some calls, tomorrow at the earliest, probably. And I’ll have to run it by Jim, we can’t disrupt the investigation.” 

“Right. Well… I think I’ll take off.” 

Jeremiah went upstairs and grabbed his things, then met Bruce back in the foyer. Bruce walked him outside, it was another cloudy late morning, the sun was periodically blocked by pale clouds. Jeremiah turned to Bruce when they came up to his car. 

“Uh, Bruce… thanks for letting me stay with you, really. I know that I was just psyching myself out and everything with Joker breaking out of Arkham, but…” He trailed off as Bruce began to shake his head. 

“Don’t say that, it’s fine. I’m glad that you felt safe with me, really. If I didn’t want you here, I wouldn’t have let you stay.” He replied, giving him a small grin. “I’ll see you soon, Miah. I’ll let you know about work.”

With that, Bruce expected Jeremiah to step into his car and drive off, only he didn’t. Jeremiah just stood there and stared at him, a lopsided grin on his face. Bruce raised his brows after a few seconds. “Uh… Jeremiah?”

The redhead’s gaze suddenly became focused and he blinked, shaking his head a little bit as he appeared to wake up from his trance. “Agh, sorry, Bruce.” 

“Are you  _ sure  _ that you can drive?” Bruce asked sincerely. Maybe Jeremiah was anxious or hadn’t gotten as much sleep as he’d let on. 

“No, no, I’m perfect, just had a ‘moment’, I guess. Take care, Bruce.” He gave him one last smile and opened the car door. Bruce took a few steps back towards the front steps as Jeremiah started up his car, and they exchanged one last wave before Jeremiah was heading down the driveway.

***

“So, I guess the smoke grenade malfunction at least did something for you? Now I think all of Gotham has gotten a look at the elusive vigilante.” Lucius glanced over at Bruce as he examined his current suit. 

“Yeah, I guess so, to both of those.” Bruce replied. 

“Suit’s held up pretty well for the past, what, year at this point?” Lucius set it down on the table and sat down across from Bruce. He tapped a piece of paper that he’d been writing on. 

“Yeah, but I haven’t really been shot at, yet.” Bruce took the jacket and held it up. “Plus, it’s a little tight now.” 

“Not surprising, but that’s why kevlar is still our best bet. I can make a full suit, have different plates clip together for full protection. Then, when you notice it’s getting snug, I can simply add some material where necessary.” Lucius jotted another line down on the piece of paper.

“You need anything from me?” Bruce knew that this entire operation was a risk, but adding Lucius into it in an even more direct way made it even riskier. The last thing that they needed was for a large order of materials to be linked to Lucius in a way other than through public Wayne Enterprises research. 

Lucius stood up and pull something round out of his pocket, then showed it to Bruce. “Just your measurements, might as well take them again now.” 

They were both quiet as Bruce held still and Lucius measured his proportions, but a few minutes in, Bruce spoke up. “I might need some more of those smoke grenades, but the suit is your priority.”

“Consider it done.” Lucius finished was he was measuring, wrote it down, then continued on. “...You know, Jeremiah would be a very good addition to our little team here. A fellow engineer, we could split the work. And you two are very close, we both know that he supporters the vigilante- seems to idolize them, even.” 

Bruce took in a deep breath and exhaled. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell him. When I saw the footage this morning, he was right next to me. I could’ve told him then and there, I could’ve answered all of his questions, but I decided not to.” 

“And why didn’t you?”

“I’m worried about him, I think.” He said softly. “People already have mixed feelings towards him, and I’ve already got you, Alfred, and Selina in on the truth. One more person to have to hold onto it, to have to bite their tongue every time that it comes up. But ideally, I would like him to know. I hate keeping it from him.” 

“Then you’ll know when the time is right.” Lucius pulled away and wrote one last thing down, then tucked the pen, paper, and measuring tape back into his pocket. “That’s all I needed from you, anything else we need to discuss?”

Bruce shook his head. “No, thanks, Lucius. Oh, Wayne Enterprises will be open again tomorrow, I told Jeremiah I would make some calls. Figured you should know before the mass email goes out.” 

“Then there’s a good chance I’ll be seeing you tomorrow, Bruce. And judging by some loose calculations, it’ll take at least a few weeks for the suit to be finished. Probably more.” 

Bruce began to pick up his suit to put it back in the proper place. “Maybe not, we’ll see.”

***

Zsasz’s name was one of the last that Bruce expected to hear on the police scanner. Almost every rogue had fallen off for a few weeks, some more than others. It was obvious that Penguin and Riddler were hiding together, but no one had any ideas as to where Zsasz was. Now he was making a return like everyone else, around the same times as each other. 

“I reckon that they’re planning something big out there.” Alfred stood next to the computer while Bruce got changed in another part of the cave. “It’s clear that it’s a whole operation, they’re all running together in an alliance. It’s on-brand for Penguin and Riddler to be sitting it out as well. We know that they don’t play well with others.”

Bruce turned the corner and stood in front of him. “I’ll be careful, I’m out of smoke grenades but I have stun ones that Lucius gave me a few weeks ago. I’ll take Zsasz out, it’ll be quiet.”

“Do I really have to remind you that he’s a master assassin and marksman? Bruce, you have to be very careful. And yes, the suit still is bullet proof, but it’s taken quite a few beatings.” Alfred placed his hand on Bruce’s shoulder and locked eyes with him. “Promise you’ll do everything you can to make sure that he doesn’t see you coming.” 

“I promise, Alfred. I’m not going to treat it lightly. If he gets the right angle on me… yeah, that could be that.” Bruce wasn’t going to sugarcoat it, going up against Zsasz was going to be dangerous. 

Alfred patted his shoulder one last time before he got into his car. The sky had completely clouded over, resulting in the last rays of the sun being almost entirely blocked in the sky. Bruce wasn’t the only person on the road, others were heading into the city as well for a long night of clubbing and drinking. The scanner had just announced that Zsasz had been seen at a warehouse by the river and had called in, making demands over hostages that he’d taken. The GCPD had received confirmation on at least five hostages, but they only heard five voices before Zsasz hung up the call. That meant that he was at least contained to that side of the city for now. It was just like last night; having a hostage, or multiple, would complicate things, but they would be Bruce’s priority. At least they were in a part of the city that wasn’t exposed to many people at once. 

Bruce watched the city lights come into view, the Gotham skyline standing out against a black night. He took an early exit to head directly down to the docks. He did his best to navigate in the dark, he turned off his headlights so it was less likely that he’d be spotted. It didn’t take long for him to ditch his car and set out alone to try and find the correct loading dock anyway. Of course Bruce loved his car, but when it came to stealth and being aware of his surroundings, he felt better being outside of it. 

He quietly stepped along the edge of a warehouse, checking for the number 16 on the side of it. After confirming that it wasn’t the correct warehouse, he moved along to another one. Bruce continued on like this for a few minutes, until he turned a corner and saw a rectangular shape down the road. The road was illuminated by a handful of cold bright lights, so Bruce made sure to avoid them as he headed towards the shape. As he got closer, he realized it was a delivery truck that was open in the back. He came up to it and examined the cargo. It was a normal meat delivery as far as he could tell, judging by the blast of cold refrigerated air that hit him and the pink color that was wrapped under layers and layers of plastic. 

The truck was parked up against a loading dock for a warehouse, and when Bruce looked up he saw 16 in faded white paint on the side. He used the truck for cover and checked around for people who were keeping guard. No one was outside as far as he could tell, but he wasn’t going to count on Zsasz doing it as a solo act. He must’ve had at least a few people with him to back him up. Bruce walked up to the loading dock and pulled himself up onto it. He looked around as he moved forward, anticipating a callout or shout, something to raise the alarm. He came to a door that led into the warehouse itself, and he slowly pushed it open. 

The lights were on in the main room, far above Bruce’s head. He heard a distinct voice- it was Zsasz- but he couldn’t exactly make out what he was saying. Bruce crouched down and slowly walked forward, pressing up against some of the boxes and containers as he tried to avoid the light, which was easier said than done. Zsasz had turned on  _ all  _ of the lights it seemed, probably to catch any movements made by the hostages. 

“You know, I just tried this new Thai place near the club that used to belong to Fish Mooney. Excellent curry, very flavorful but not overly brothy. I think any catering that we do should be through there.” It was Zsasz, clearly talking to another person. ‘Catering’, which meant groups and events, which meant that whoever Zsasz was talking to was a somewhat long-term partner. 

“How are their spring rolls?”

Oh,  _ shit _ . 

Bruce felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, he felt his entire body shiver. It was exactly as he’d feared and speculated- Joker was making a grand return with almost  _ all  _ of the rogues. 

“Oh, really good! That peanut sauce? Oh, yeah,  _ that’s  _ the stuff. Serious, grab lunch there tomorrow, just call ahead and run in to grab it, they won’t mind. Business is business.” 

“Hmm, well, you certainly have me interested..” 

Bruce crept up to the edge of the container he was up against and peeked around it. Joker and Zsasz were standing in the center of the room. They had a few men with them who were pointing guns at other men sitting down- the workers who’d been taken hostage. Bruce was still far enough away that when he moved to the next set of crates and shelves, no one looked in his direction. 

He moved along and looked towards the center of the room, this time there was a man a few feet away with his back to Bruce, muttering to the hostages on the ground next to him. Bruce took a few steps back and tapped his hand against one of the containers so it made a sound. 

“Who’s there?” Bruce stepped back, farther into the safety of his cover. 

“Huh, I figure there’s gotta be a rat infestation in this place, right?” Zsasz asked. 

“Probably, but I’ll be damned if this plan is ruined.  _ You _ , go check it out!” 

“Yes, sir!”

Bruce waited a few moments before jumping up on the container and pulling himself up. He stayed low so that he wouldn’t be seen, and there were still a few containers and shelves separating him and the two men in the middle. As the grunt came around, Bruce inched his way up the container, then slowly stood when he reached the edge of it. He glanced back, and when the guy almost turned up the other way, he leapt across to the other container. He felt his heart thumping in his chest, he did his best to control his breathing. 

“I could’ve sworn I just heard that from the same direction!” Joker barked out. Bruce could see him turn around fully to look. “That’s it, let  _ me _ have a look.”

“I don’t see anything, boss!” 

Joker practically stomped in Bruce’s general direction, mumbling to himself about how he needs to do everything himself and how he was going to leave a 0 star review for these henchmen. Bruce lightly padded his way over to the end of the container and jumped again, then he jumped down and ran between some of the crates. 

“Zsasz, I heard another noise! Don’t just stand there, you remember the plan!” Joker screeched out. Bruce tried to move as quickly as possible without making too much noise. He was looking for something in particular, something that would give him the upper hand-

_ there! _

Bruce ran straight at the exact thing that he’d been looking for- it was the circuit box for the warehouse. He tore it open as he heard Zsasz’s voice. “It’s them! I see them, in the back, it’s the vigilante!” 

Bruce hit every circuit with his arm, and suddenly the warehouse fell into complete darkness. A few of the hostages cried out in surprise, and Bruce tore off, running as fast as he could down to the other end of the warehouse. He heard footsteps behind him, steps that definitely weren’t his, as he ran and his eyes adjusting. Moonlight came in through the windows of the warehouse, splaying out dim moonbeams on the floor and allowing for his eyes to adjust. He leapt up onto a container again and rummaged around in his pouches. He found the stun grenades and tossed a few down below him, hoping someone would hit one. 

“Kill the hostages! I repeat, kill the hostages!” Joker yelled out to the warehouse. 

“ _ Don’t! _ ” Bruce turned his attention to the center of the room, but before he could make a move, he heard gunshots ringing out, echoing through the entire warehouse. 

_ They killed the hostages, they killed all of the hostages and it’s your fault. All of those innocent men are dead and it’s because of you- _

Bruce suddenly started when he heard another shot below him and heard a bullet ricochet off of something near him. “Zsasz, I can’t see a damn thing!”

“Hold on, just give me a minute to set up!” 

Bruce jumped across to another container and climbed up to gain some height. He heard footfalls beneath him and clothes being rustled. He couldn’t do anything now, it was too late. He was too slow, he was too reckless, he needed a better plan, he could’ve done this whole thing in a million different ways and of course he chose the  _ wrong _ way. How many were dead? Ten, at least. All because of him. He could’ve stunned Zsasz, Joker, and their men, then freed the hostages and given them time to escape. He just dove in without a plan at all, without an inkling of what was going on. He should’ve hung back, analyzed the situation, been sneakier, played to his strengths. 

Bruce began to make his way along the next long side of the warehouse, headed for the back where the entrance he’d come out of was. He could faintly make out where each container stopped and started now that his eyes were adjusting more and more. He heard and felt shots whizzing by him, hitting almost everything  _ but _ him. The men were still shooting blind, hoping for a lucky shot. 

He looked towards the center of the building, and to his dismay he saw outlines of bodies, none of which appeared to be moving or breathing. A dark liquid was pooling from a few of them across the floor, he could already smell it if he concentrated hard enough. He could never forget that smell. 

“He’s headed for the back entrance, try to cut him off!” Zsasz sounded far away, but it was difficult to tell with his voice bouncing around in the warehouse. Bruce’s heart was nearly in his throat, he heard and felt every breath that he was taking. He blinked hard and focused ahead, jumping to another container and digging around for more stun bombs.

This time he  _ did  _ feel something small sharply hit him in the lower back, but it didn’t hurt him. “I shot him, boss, why isn’t he down?”

“Because he’s wearing armor, you baboon! Just try to slow him down!” 

By now, Bruce’s eyes had adjusted enough to the point where he could more clearly see the outline of the people below who were chasing him. They’d given up on shooting and now were just focused on getting ahead of him and cutting him off. Bruce tossed a few of his stun grenades in their paths and focused the remainder of his energy on getting out of that door. 

His legs started to protest, but he ignored them. He heard a few cries of pain from the men as currents of electricity ran through them, but he didn’t stop to look down at them. He could see the door was just a few container away, he leapt to the next one. This time he almost didn’t make it, he ended up having to pull himself up after hitting the side of it flatly with his chest. 

“I’m clear! He’s almost at the door!” 

Bruce jumped to the next crate, again, not landing quite on top of it. He was panting hard now, his hood and his mask felt too tight, everything seemed to be squeezing him tighter and tighter with each step. The door was right there, he just had to get through and he could run to the car. 

He jumped down right in front of the door. As he fell, he threw a few more stun grenades down to the floor, which bought him time to grab the door handle and fling it open. He ran through immediately, and just as he was about to breathe a sigh of relief-

He couldn’t feel his shoulder. 

Then his shoulder suddenly was on fire. “NAILED IT!” 

He cried out in pain, his left hand came up to clutch at his right shoulder. He actually had to look over to make sure that it  _ wasn’t  _ on fire. He squeezed it as the searing pain moved from the back of his shoulder, encapsulating all of it. It felt like someone had hit him with a baseball bat that was on fire and the fire had transferred over to him. It was travelling down his arm. Every breath that Bruce took and let out was laced with noises of shock and pain that he didn’t even realize he was making. His legs were somehow still working, but once he reached the drop for the loading dock he plummeted down to the ground, legs giving out. 

“He won’t make it ten feet, good shot!” 

_ No. I will make it ten feet. I’ll make it twenty feet, I’ll make it twenty fucking yards-  _

Bruce had to use his good arm to push himself back up on his feet. He continued clutching his shoulder and began to retrace his steps, heading towards the direction of the highway where his car was tucked away. He didn’t hear anyone behind him, but he couldn’t really hear anything. All he heard in his head was his heart beat, the pump of his blood, rushing in his ears. His shoulder was going numb, and he ended up moving his wrist a little bit to make sure that his hand wasn’t going numb. It sent stabs of pain up his arm, all the way to his neck. “Shit..”

He felt his eyes watering. He couldn’t keep this up, he could easily pass out from the pain, and then he’d bleed out. He focused on just breathing and walking for a few seconds, keeping his arm tucked close to his body without moving it too much. 

How long could he last? He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t go to a hospital, that was off the table. What about Selina? Even if he made it to her apartment with no one noticing him, there was a good chance that she wouldn’t even be there. Home? No, even speeding it would take time, and with the traffic over the bridge he would risk a serious accident. He had to go somewhere in the city, or at least not too far from it, closer than home. Lucius wouldn’t be able to help him, and Bruce didn’t even remember where he lived. 

He stumbled to the car and as he sat down, he suddenly had an idea. 

It was a stupid idea, but this was life or death. It was about damn time anyway, they had to clear the air sometime before their relationship developed further. Bruce started up his car and headed for the highway, not even bothering to put his seatbelt on. He pulled out his phone with his bad arm and carefully speed dialed the one person he knew would be there. “God, fuck, dammit..” He tried to even his breathing as it rang in his ear, he stared at the road ahead of him and pulled onto the highway. Luckily, the traffic leaving the city was extremely light. 

“H-Hello? B-Bruce it’s late, what’s wrong-?”

“Jeremiah, do you trust me?” Bruce asked loudly, trying to get Jeremiah’s immediate attention. He moved into the next lane and exited off of the far end of the bridge, turning down and heading down the road that led into Gotham Woods. 

If Bruce were paying attention to little details, he would’ve heard Jeremiah start shifting and rustling on the other end of the line. “Trust? Of course I do, Bruce! What’s going on?”

“I need.. I need you to  _ really  _ trust me right now, ok?” Bruce felt another hot pain, it was spreading down the right side of his body. 

“Ok, ok I’m listening! Bruce, what’s wrong, tell me! You sound like you’re hurt!” 

“Just.. just be… at the front of the bunker as soon as you can..” He replied softly as another wave of pain hit him, it nearly made him see stars. 

“I’ll be there, I’m coming right now, I promise-” 

Bruce hung up and shoved his phone into his pocket. He hit the gas harder and sped past the cemetery and as he drove deeper into the woods. He turned onto a dirt road, going much faster than he should’ve been. His car was bouncing around, but he didn’t care. He’ll fix the fucking car later. 

The small portion of the bunker that was above ground was visible at the edge of his lights. Bruce stopped right in front of it, careful not to hit Jeremiah’s car. He cut the engine and practically rolled out of the seat, dropping to his knees on the ground. He took a few deep breaths and pushed himself up, using his car as leverage. He shut the door and made his way over to the bunker’s entrance, and just as he was about to hit the button, the door swung open. 

“Oh fucking christ.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eventually, my goal became to just get this out before Animal Crossing released, and I did so with less than 24 hours to go! Shoutout to be quarantined! (I'm sure that many of you are in the same situation, definitely a good time to read some fanfiction) Thank you guys for reading and for being patient and dealing with me. Like I said, I wanted to get this out before Animal Crossing comes out, and I honestly have no idea when I'll be sitting down next to tackle some writing because of that, so I just ask that you guys continue to bear with me. I'm finally also hitting strides in this fic, writer's block combined with video game addiction has been preventing me from writing. It's after midnight as I'm writing this, so as soon as this goes up I'm going to pass out. Thank you guys for being here, and as always, comments and kudos are always appreciated!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, it's been a hot second, hasn't it?

Bruce raised his good arm and pulled off his mask, not that he really needed to, Jeremiah knew that it was him. He thought that he was tasting blood, but there wasn’t any in his mouth. “I’m sure… I’m sure that you’ve got a million questions-”

Jeremiah motioned for him to step into the hallway, then he took Bruce’s arm as he shut the door behind him. “I-I probably have less than you might think.” They set down the small flight of stairs that led down to the rest of the bunker. Bruce groaned with each step, squeezing his injured arm tighter to give himself something to do. He focused on breathing, in through his nose, out through his mouth, again, again, as Jeremiah led him down the hallway at the bottom of the stairs. 

“Still, you need to start talking. Your injury first.” Jeremiah glanced over at Bruce. 

“Gunshot wound, I can’t tell if the bullet’s inside or not. Don’t know if it grazed or not, either.”

Jeremiah tugged Bruce into the lab, then pointed to the work table. Bruce felt Jeremiah pull away from him, so he slowly stepped over to the table. He turned around and managed to hop up onto it with a soft  _ oof _ . When he looked back to the entrance to the lab, Jeremiah was gone.    
  


“Jere-?!” 

He suddenly was in the doorway and swiftly came over to Bruce. He set a washcloth and a small briefcase-like object down onto the table- a first-aid kit. Bruce moved his good arm and unzipped his jacket. He managed to pull one arm through as Jeremiah put on disposable gloves, then Jeremiah carefully pulled the jacket down his arm a little bit. Bruce briefly glanced at the fabric itself.    
  


“..Torn through… that doesn’t make any sense.” 

Jeremiah rolled up Bruce’s shirt sleeve as carefully as he could, making sure not to brush up against where he guessed the actual injury was. “What do you mean? Bullet-proof jacket?”

Bruce nodded, glancing between the injury and Jeremiah. “Yeah.. I mean, it was wearing a bit, that’s for sure, but… suddenly to just fail from a normal bullet? Even if it’s on the shoulder joint..”

“Seems unlikely, I understand.” Jeremiah tore open a cleaning wipe and took a breath. “...You’re sure that  _ you _ trust  _ me _ ?”

Bruce grabbed the edge of the table to brace. “With my life literally and figuratively? Of course I do.” 

He squeezed his eyes shut as a sharp stab hit his shoulder. He felt Jeremiah starting to clean it as fast as he could, wiping up the injury, then the surrounding blood to get a better look, then going back into the deep gash. Bruce focused on the room- Jeremiah of course had a Periodic Table on the wall. Bruce began to read it, going over each element, atomic weight and number, their symbols, anything to keep him sharp and focused so that he wouldn’t pass out from the pain. 

“Bullet’s not here, it grazed you, but pretty deeply. Looks like it took a sizable chunk of skin, muscle, and fat out of your shoulder.”

Bruce took a deep breath and looked over at him as he pressed down on the wound with some gauze. “So… if I weren’t in danger it would be pretty cool?”

Jeremiah gave him a look and picked up the washcloth. He pressed it to the wound and Bruce realized it was wet, damp with warm water. “ _ Bruce _ , this is no joke! You’re still in danger, you could still bleed out.” 

Bruce shook his head. “I’m sorry, just... this isn’t the first time I thought I was going to die. I hate to say it, but… I’ve probably gotten used to it.”

“And based upon your outfit and what I think we need to discuss…” Jeremiah carefully cleaned the wound some more, then dropped the cloth. He rubbed some cream onto a gauze and pressed it to Bruce’s shoulder next. It felt cool, and Bruce felt a numbing sensation on his skin. “...it won’t be the last.”

“It certainly won’t.” 

After about a minute of Jeremiah pressing the cream onto the injury to numb it and help stop the bleeding, he spoke again. “...It was him, wasn’t it?”

“...It was Zsasz who actually landed the shot… but he was there.”

Jeremiah sighed and set the gauze down, then began to mess with something in the kit that Bruce couldn’t see. “Do you think that he knows..?”

“Honestly, I don’t know, I can’t tell. Either he’s clueless or he figured it out a while ago.” Bruce finally relaxed as more of the numbing kicked in. “He likes mystery, though. So even if he knows, he might not want to  _ spoil  _ it for everyone else. I really just hope that he has no damn clue. One less thing to worry about.” 

Bruce felt a sort of tugging pressure on his shoulder, so he decided to turn more forward again and went back to reading the Periodic Table while Jeremiah stitched him up. 

“..Alright, now that your life is in much less immediate peril, I need some answers.” Jeremiah said softly as he tugged on Bruce’s skin a little. 

“Let’s see… I’ve been doing this for a while now, longer than the cops think I’ve been doing it. Alfred and Lucius know… now you know. Though, I’m sure you had your suspicions.” 

“I absolutely had my suspicions, but I think I tried to talk myself out of them. The thought of you fighting crime, going out into the city at night, facing off dangerous people… it’s hard to focus on work when you’re worried about your best friend putting their life in danger all the time.” 

Bruce glanced over. “So… was your idolization of the vigilante just to blow smoke up my ass and to get me to tell you?”

Jeremiah chuckled. “I wish I could say that it was, but it wasn’t. I do idolize the vigilante, I idolize  _ you _ . You’re fighting for the city in both ways- the legal and the… not-so legal.”

“...Do you think it’s the right way?” Bruce asked softly. 

“I think that… sometimes the law can’t do what needs to be done. Sometimes too many people are under someone’s thumb, sometimes the system is so corrupt that you can’t work with it.” Jeremiah tied off the stitch and cut it, then began to press a bandage over it. “And if Joker is coming back with as many ties as we think he is… the city might need a one-man army to infiltrate where the cops can’t.”

“Yeah… I did a  _ great  _ job on that one.”   
  


“Let’s..” Jeremiah began to put his things back into the kit, and after checking Bruce’s shoulder again, he pulled off the gloves and tossed them into a nearby bin. He moved the kit over and sat next to Bruce. “...Let’s stop beating ourselves up, and how about we talk about the current case? The robberies? Come on, Bruce. You’ve let me in, and now I  _ want _ in.” He suddenly chuckled and gestured to Bruce. “I mean, you’re a damn vigilante! You’re a crimefighter! This city has seen a lot, I know, but this… this is big. And I’m ready to do whatever I can to help you. So please, let me in on this whole thing.”

Bruce gazed at him for a few seconds, and now that he was calming down, he realized how tired he was, and what time it was. “I will, but… I need to call Alfred. After that… I need to sleep here, Jeremiah. Unless you want to drive me to the manor and spend the night. But we’re both very tired.”

Jeremiah looked at his watch as if he also was remembering that it was in the middle of the night. “Oh, yeah, yeah. Where’s your phone?”

He patted his pockets for a moment and pulled it out. “Got it right here, I’ll call him now.”

“Ok… I’ll get a pillow and some blankets for you. The best thing that I’ve got is the couch- I don’t exactly have a guest room.” Jeremiah replied, cheeks flushing in embarrassment. 

“That’s all I need, thanks. I feel dead, anyway, I don’t think it’ll be hard for me to get to sleep.” As Jeremiah left, Bruce opened Alfred’s contact and called him directly. 

“Bruce? Where are you? Are you alright?”    
  


“Alfred, Alfred, hey… uh… I’m going to be spending the night with Jeremiah. Something came up and-” 

“The night with Jeremiah? Something came up? Bruce, did you have to tell him?”

“...I did, and he wants in. But that’s the least important thing right now. I… I’m ok, I’m stable, I was able to get to Jeremiah in time, but.. I may or may not have gotten shot.”

“ _ Bloody _ \- for fuck’s sake, Bruce! You got shot and went to Jeremiah?!”

“Alfred, it’s ok! I was ready to tell him- I  _ needed _ to tell him. I knew I could trust him and I knew that he would help me. And he was closer than home, I was driving and couldn’t risk getting into an accident and killing more people than just myself. I wouldn’t have made it home in time. And the hospital was out of the question. I thought about coming into the ER and lying, I really did, but then the police would get involved, the GCPD would be looking for a mugger or attempted-murderer that wouldn’t even be real. I know you’re worried, and I’m really sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier.” 

“...So you’re staying over with him for the night?”

“I am. He’s setting up the couch for me. I’m going to knock out in a few minutes.”

Alfred sighed on the other end. “Right, well… you call me in the morning on how it is then, yeah? Try to move as little as possible, and make sure you get some water into you before you sleep.”

“Yes, Alfred… thanks for the advice. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.” Bruce hung up the call and slowly lowered himself off of the table, then he managed to slip his jacket off completely. He picked it up, along with his mask, then took a few steps towards the office doorway as Jeremiah returned. 

“Anything I can do?”

Bruce cleared his throat. “Some water would be great. Alfred reminded me to drink some before bed. And maybe a face cloth so I can wash my face? I feel really gross right now.”

Jeremiah nodded with each request. “Yeah, sure. You should shower up in the morning, I’m sure that you’re too tired now.” With that, he took off down the hall to prepare what Bruce asked for. 

Bruce hovered by the bathroom door for less than a minute once he reached it, then Jeremiah was handing him a bottle of water and two pills. “Some pain meds to help. That numbing stuff is powerful, but it won’t last much longer.” 

Bruce nodded and downed both pills, then Jeremiah handed him a face cloth. He closed the door behind him and looked in the mirror as he began to pull his pants off with one hand. He looked pretty damn awful: hair everywhere, a thin layer of sweat visible on his face, bags under his eyes. He wet the face cloth and used it to just wipe down his face and neck. He even passed it over his chest and torso to cool off a little bit. After that, he shimmied his bottom armor off to use the bathroom. He looked at himself as he washed his hands- the bags were still there, but he didn’t look nearly as dead. 

Bruce practically downed the rest of the water as Jeremiah led him down the hall to the den where the couch was set up for him. Bruce just set his things on the floor and the water on the coffee table. He didn’t exactly need to hide anything. 

Jeremiah adjusted his glasses and stood next to Bruce as he slowly sat down on the couch and eased himself into a laying position. “If something happens, calling me will be the easiest. Sound doesn’t travel very easily in here.”

Bruce nodded and looked up at him. His light t-shirt and sweatpants smelled something awful, but he was too tired to care right now. “Thanks Jeremiah. Thank you so much.”

“We’ll talk more about this tomorrow, ok?” Bruce nodded in agreement. “Good… alright, then. Goodnight, Bruce. I hope you get some rest.”

“Goodnight, Miah. I hope you get some rest, too.”

***

Bruce wasn’t used to having no light filter into the room that he slept in. At home, he always naturally woke up from the sun peeking in or hearing the birds outside, but not this morning. Bruce slept hard. He wasn’t even sure what time it had been when he’d gone to sleep. He only woke when Jeremiah peeked into the den to check on him and gently woke him. 

“What’s the time?” Bruce slowly began to push himself up on the couch. 

“Almost noon. I’ve only been up for an hour. How’d you sleep?” Jeremiah slowly lowered a mug into Bruce’s field of view, and Bruce carefully took it. 

“Thanks..” Bruce sipped the herbal tea. “Pretty well, but now the pain meds have all worn off. I’m just surprised that it didn’t wake me earlier.”

“Your body is forcing you to sleep longer to help with recovery, I suppose. Put all your energy into keeping functions going at base levels while you sleep so that everything else can be used for the wound.” Jeremiah shifted. “Should I.. make breakfast?” 

“Yeah, we need to talk about… all of this.” 

Jeremiah helped Bruce get up from the couch, then left him to go make breakfast. Bruce declined any extra help- he had to live with this for a few weeks now, and he was going to power through as much on his own as he could. 

After he used the bathroom and washed up, he came slowly into the kitchen and sat down with his drink, now almost completely gone. Jeremiah was using a pancake mix, Bruce smelled the batter and it made his stomach rumble. “..So where should I start?”

Jeremiah shrugged over at the stove. “I dunno. You filled in the bigger gaps last night, I guess. Oh, we were going to go over the current case with the robberies. You told me that the burglar was Tabitha Galavan, but you brushed me off when I asked you about it. You said you used the tapes from Wayne Enterprises and the shop to figure it out, but I’m going to guess that you.. didn’t.”

“You’re right, it wasn’t the tapes that tipped me off. That night, the day before I told you about my ‘hunch’, was the night that that tailor shop was hit. I was  _ there _ . I watched from across the street. It was pretty obvious at first- Freeze and Firefly were bickering and clearly the leader was the burglar- same outfit and everything. I heard her speak multiple times and got a much clearer look at her in the light. I  _ know  _ it was Tabitha. Which explains how she bypassed our security without a hitch, she has access to so many people and resources. The hit on the jewelry shop is either to throw suspicion off of Penguin, or she hit him just because they have a feud. Or maybe it’s neither.” 

Jeremiah poked the cakes and flipped them. “Did you see the suit?”

“Sadly I couldn’t. The street was way too dark and I didn’t want to get closer than absolutely necessary. All I know is that the lights that were around weren’t really reflected by it. Doesn’t exactly help us narrow anything down… ugh, I feel like shit.” Bruce rubs between his eyes. “Dead end after dead end. Harvey Dent almost died because of me- a bunch of  _ hostages _ were killed last night because of me, I let myself get  _ shot _ … a fucking disaster.”

“Bruce, no one is asking you to be perfect at this.” Jeremiah sighed softly. “No one is even asking you to do this at  _ all _ . You’re helping more than you think. You’ve saved people. That’s where it starts- saving people on the streets as the vigilante and hitting the money and politics as Bruce Wayne. You can sandwich it from both ends- and the whole damn city is none the wiser.” Jeremiah finished up the pancakes and brought the plate over to the table. “They’ll sit in their goddamn ivory towers, allowing the crime lords to run the city, letting Penguin run rampant, letting poverty rates stay where they are. You told me that it was a shadow organization- the Court of Owls- led by Ra’s al Ghul, that really controlled the city and Wayne Enterprises. Ra’s is gone now. He’s dead-” 

“He isn’t dead.” 

Jeremiah stared at Bruce, unblinking. He spoke after a few moments of silence. “...You told me that he forced you to kill him. You had no choice, there was no other way-”

“Yes, and that’s all true, but.. sometime after I met you, Selina and I were essentially kidnapped by his followers, Tabitha was actually working with them at the time. They used my blood to resurrect Ra’s. So… Selina knows and I had to tell Alfred of course. Jim I’m sure has told the rest of the GCPD, considering they genuinely were dealing with him at some point, but Ra’s has dropped off the planet it seems. I haven’t seen him since that night. I just know that they used me to bring him back. And… I know that when he returns, he will do everything that he can to get me to kill him again. He needed to come back for a reason apparently, I guess I wasn’t supposed to kill him when I did.” Bruce’s gaze fell as he spoke, from looking up at Jeremiah to down to his lap. He heard Jeremiah start to move again in the kitchen. 

“And you’re worried that what happened the first time will happen again..” Jeremiah placed a few things slowly on the table. “That’s why you didn’t want to tell me. You don’t want me to worry and you don’t want to think about what might happen to you.” 

Bruce sighed and looked up at him. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Throw myself into my vigilante work, maybe. Instead of partying I’ll be fighting.” 

Jeremiah made a few trips between the table and the kitchen counters, until finally he sat down across from Bruce. “All that partying? That  _ was  _ you fighting. Fighting yourself. Beating yourself up, fighting any string of sadness because that’s the  _ only  _ thing that you were feeling.” 

Bruce looked over at him again. “...I hurt everyone that I cared about. I hurt myself. I wanted to be someone else. I didn’t want to be Bruce Wayne anymore. I just wanted… to be away from here. From everything. From what I’d done.” 

“You don’t need to fight it alone, Bruce.” Jeremiah said softly as he pushed up his glasses. “You already do so much fighting by yourself. Let us help you with the other fights. I’m your best friend. It can be easier to talk to a friend, just someone who isn’t family. It’s a different type of closeness, you know? I know you wanna do right by Alfred, but we both know that he’d rather you hide a few things from him than  _ everything _ . I can’t pull you out of something if you end up digging a hole for yourself again. I know that I can’t, it’s only something that you can fix, and I’m not going to fight with you and ruin our friendship because you’re in a drunken stupor and aren’t thinking correctly.” 

“..I can’t let myself get like that again. For my sake, for you, for Alfred, for everyone.” Bruce looked to Jeremiah as Miah began to put a few cakes on his plate. “I can’t thank you enough, Jeremiah. For being so kind to me. Letting me stay and vent to you.”

“..Just don’t get killed out there and we’ll call it even.” Jeremiah moved a few of the pancakes onto Bruce’s plate, a small smile on his lips. “You’re my best friend, of course I’m gonna help. And with your investigations, too. And Lucius and I can split the engineering bill- just let me know what’s what.”

Bruce began to butter his pancakes. “This brings us to the case again… I’m worried about Harvey Dent. Not just the physical injury, but the scars that we can’t see.”

“So.. Joker kidnapped him, had him mostly blindfolded from what we know, and tried to kill him. That’s going to leave a lot of marks- especially with how he narrowly escaped death.” Jeremiah said, clearly going over the events in his head again. “I hope he gets the help that he needs. Sadly he’ll likely be out of the courtroom for a few months for mental and physical recovery. One of the few who wasn’t corrupt, right?”

Bruce nodded and began to eat. “From what I understand. Jim trusted him and they brought down some corruption in the GCPD at the very start of everything. Dent knew not to cross the line, but he toed it more than once. He had a fair number of cases with troubled teens, if I recall correctly. Didn’t want them getting punished too harshly for small things before they were even adults.”

“That’s admirable. I’m disappointed to see that the system will lose someone so decent, even if it’s just for a little while.” 

*** 

Jeremiah insisted that Bruce sit still while he did all the dishes. Bruce tried to protest, but if he couldn’t do many movements with one arm, he’d be useless for helping clean up. After Jeremiah was done, he left for some medical supplies. He wanted to check on Bruce before letting him drive home by himself. Bruce could do that much, at least. Driving with one hand was something he was already used to, and it wasn’t that long of a drive back to the manor. 

Jeremiah rolled up Bruce’s sleeve and carefully pulled off the tape and gauze. “How does it look?” 

“Well, the stitches are still in place and have held up, still some blood of course, but nothing major. I’m just going to clean it up again and put a new bandage over it.”

Bruce nodded and soon felt the stings on his skin, but he hid his reaction and just focused on his breathing. Suddenly, he was speaking without thinking of his words. “Jeremiah, before we go further with this..” He caught himself and trailed off, eyes widening at what he was certain he was about to say. 

Jeremiah slowly placed the new bandage over the injury. “What is it, Bruce?”

Bruce’s throat and mouth went dry. He glanced over to Jeremiah.  _ It won’t work if he doesn’t know. Staying closed off is what caused you to break up with Selina. _ “I.. the real reason why Selina and I broke up isn’t just the fighting. We weren’t just having small disagreements.” He let out a breath and locked eyes with Jeremiah, feeling his face and chest heating up. “We were fighting about  _ you _ .”

Jeremiah stared at Bruce for a moment. “About… me? Why me?”

“Because she figured out a while ago..” Bruce closed his eyes, shoulders dropping. “..god- she figured out a while ago that my feelings for her have lessened, and instead… I have strong feelings for  _ you _ .” 

Jeremiah blinked at him twice, hands stopping in the middle of him pulling off his gloves. His lips moved slightly for a few seconds, but nothing came out. 

Bruce pulled down his sleeve a little, covering the bandage. “I’m sorry. I need you to know, especially if you want in on all of this. Just to… get everything out there, clear the air and all that. You don’t have to say anything, I should be going, anyway.” 

Jeremiah pulled off the gloves and trashed them. He went to the sink to wash his hands. “..You really mean that, Bruce?” 

“Of course I do. I wouldn’t joke about it.” He looked over at him as Jeremiah finished up, then their eyes locked when he turned. “If you want to change your mind or you don’t feel the same way, I understa-”

Jeremiah suddenly strode over and reached out to place his hand on top of Bruce’s on the table. Bruce looked to their hands, then to Jeremiah. His brows raised a little as he stared at him. “Oh..” He began to stand so that they were at eye level with each other. A sudden calm washed over Bruce. Jeremiah’s feelings were all over his face. The worry of his reaction was quickly swallowed up. 

Jeremiah’s eyes couldn’t seem to be still, they continuously flitted back and forth, as if scanning Bruce’s entire face. “...What.. does this mean for us?”

Bruce blinked at him. “It means… we can go out together, if we’d like to.”

“I’d… really like to.” Jeremiah swallowed thickly, cheeks turning pink. He looked at Bruce again. “What about you? Do you… would you like to go out with me?”

Bruce felt himself smiling a little, something out of his control. “Yeah I would.. also really like to go out with you.”

“Good.” 

“...Good.”

Jeremiah rubbed his arm sheepishly. “Uh.. that was really awkward.”

Bruce chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry, I’ve never really… asked someone out before. I didn’t want to say something silly and ruin the moment.”

“You say something silly?” Jeremiah giggled into the back of his hand. “I’m the mess over here, you’re cool, as always.”

“I just… don’t show everything going on in my head, you know that.” Bruce went to cross his arms, but one of Miah’s hands was still on his, so he decided against it. “I don’t wanna be a fool and spill my guts before we even have our first date.”

“Ah, timing, yes… something I’ll have to keep in mind.” Jeremiah sighed and pulled away to cross his own arms. “You’ll have to forgive me, Bruce. Dating has never been my ‘thing’, as you know.”

Bruce shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll know the right time to take certain steps. It’s not a race, don’t think that we’re ‘behind’ other people. We’re only starting out, it’s not always good to rush head-first into things.” He looked at the time and huffed. “I should probably be off, now. Afternoon, gotta get back to Alfred. I don’t know if I’ll be able to work on the case much more- sadly last night.. Really didn’t help that much.”

“Please tell me that you’re not going out tonight.” Jeremiah said suddenly, turning to him with wide eyes. His tone went from thoughtful and light to worried and pained. 

“As much as part of me wants to… I know that this needs to heal and that I can’t be back out there for at least a few more nights.” Bruce said softly, feeling defeated. 

“You need probably at least a week of bedrest. Try to work from home so you’re not driving into work every day. If you want to see me, then I’ll come over. And I’m sure that Alfred will know how to best handle your wound.” Jeremiah reached over and rubbed Bruce’s arm. “And there’s no point in pursuing Joker if you don’t know his next moves anyway. All we know now is that Zsasz is in on it. That means that we’ve just got an extra assassin to worry about. Let me know when you tell Lucius I’m in- I’ll reach out to him and ask if I can help on any current projects. I can’t do anything directly about the robbery and the case, no matter how much it still pisses me off, but I can help  _ you _ do something about it.”

“I’ll talk to him when I get home. He’s working on… a bigger project for me right now. One that’s long overdue, but I just needed to work some things out.” 

Jeremiah suddenly grinned. “...You’re getting a new suit, aren’t you? I’d love to help him hash some things out!” 

“Be my guest, it’s not easy for one person to make, I’m sure he’ll be grateful for the assist. Like I said, I’ll let you know.”

Bruce went to the den to gather his suit from next to the couch. He stopped at the stairs and looked at Jeremiah over his armor. “I’ll.. be seeing you, Miah.”

Jeremiah seemed different. Maybe he was holding himself differently- or maybe Bruce was just seeing things. “Yes, take care, Bruce. Thank you for trusting me with all of this. I’ll see you soon, hopefully- but remember to stay home. Your arm needs to heal.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll remember, I promise.”

***

When Bruce pulled into the garage, Alfred was coming out of the manor to meet him. “Bruce, god, let me see you..” 

Bruce was pulling his suit from the back and looked up at Alfred. “Hey, I’m fine, I’m good right now.” 

Alfred began to take the armor parts from him. “But you’re still nowhere near 100%. I swear, if you have  _ any  _ inclinations about going out tonight-”

Bruce shut the car door and locked it. “I have no plans to go out for close to a week at the very least. And I’m going to try to stay here at home for Wayne Enterprises work. There’s no use of me going out there when I don’t have enough information on the case. Plus I really should wait until the new suit is finished. This one is basically done for now.”

Alfred nodded. “Right. Did Jeremiah tend to your injury this morning?” 

The two began to walk towards the door and Bruce stepped inside first. He hung up his keys as Alfred passed and shut the door. “Yes, he did. I have a fresh bandage and gauze on there. We should probably change it daily. The stitches held up very well. I’m going to take some more pain medication.”

As Bruce got himself some water and the pills, Alfred stood in the kitchen with his arms full of the armor. “And what about this, then?”

Bruce set his glass down and reached up to take the suit. He could still use his hand fine, so he just held his boots and kept his arm relaxed while the other one took most of the load. “I’ll put it downstairs. If I need to, I might be able to use parts of it, and I can still use it as a model if Lucius needs to compare the new pieces to it. But I don’t plan on using it ever again.”

“Right… I still can’t believe that the bullet went completely through the shoulder.” Alfred reached over to the top piece and examined where the bullet sliced through the side. “Even if it was a weaker area.. and the material was starting to fall apart..”

“It was likely a special bullet- it was Zsasz, after all. He can get his hands on all sorts of weapons and ammo. The question is just where or who did he get it from? And how was it made?” Bruce turned down the hall and made his way to the study with Alfred trailing behind him. 

“A secret operation of sorts? Manufacturing deadly weapons and giving them to the highest bidders? Hugh-hush from the police and all that?” 

Bruce made his way to his desk to open up the fireplace. “I can only assume so. Possibly even ex-officers and soldiers, or maybe it’s a gang or part of the mob. Zsasz could easily get along with a group like that, and he has ways of obtaining tons of cash. Not hard for him to buy black market weapons and ammo.”

Bruce lightly stepped down into the cave, hitting the lights as he went. “I’ll try to tackle that over the next few days, then. See what comes up and if I can get any leads.” He hit the light at the bottom that lit up most of the cave, then headed directly for where he kept the suit normally. He put it back where it always went, hung up in the corner, but now it would be for display only. Bruce set the boots down and began to wonder a bit suddenly about his armor. How many new suits would he ask Lucius to build? How long would they be doing this for? Would Lucius eventually dip out, not wanting any part in it, so Jeremiah would have to fully take over?

Bruce rubbed his eyes and glanced at Alfred. “I’m going to get a head start on all of this, but I’m pretty tired. I’ll try not to fall asleep, you might have to come get me for dinner later.”

Alfred nodded once. “Right, sir. Don’t push yourself too hard, I’ll be upstairs if you need me. And if your shoulder starts to bother you suddenly, come find me. We don’t want any infection or a stitch to break.” With that, he headed back upstairs, so Bruce made his way over to his computer. He turned it on and first decided to catch up on any news. Harvey Dent was still in the hospital, declining any interviews. From the news feed that Bruce was watching, they made it sound like Harvey wasn’t letting anyone see him. Bruce wasn’t even sure if he had family in the city, he didn’t think so at least. Still, Dent was a decent guy, surely he had friends who were worried about him that he’d like to see? 

Then Bruce remembered how he felt in the hospital. Gross, tired, in need of a decent meal, a hot shower, and some real sleep back in his own bed. And Harvey had just been through a kidnapping, along with a genuine attempt on his life. Plus, he had physical marks that everyone who visited him would likely see. Bruce rubbed his temple, suddenly thinking about Harvey lying on the ground, crying out in agony, and how part of his face was simply  _ gone _ . He likely didn’t want anyone that he cared about to see him like that.

Harvey’s doctor once again reassured everyone in the interview that Harvey was stable and in the safest hands in the city, but that it was hard to predict when he’d be out of the hospital, and that there was no way of knowing just how big of a physical recovery he’d make. Bruce moved onto another article, and of course the massacre in the warehouse that went down last night had been reported by a worker in the early hours of the morning. The problem was that neither the press nor the police knew what had happened there, or more importantly, who had done it. Bruce was the only person who would be able to tell them, which would let them get the word out that Joker and Zsasz were working together. Then again, he was just a vigilante. They likely wouldn’t believe him without any proof, and Bruce had none. He didn’t even have the damn bullet that Zsasz shot him with. 

Bruce decided that he’d had enough of the news. The rest of it was pretty depressing anyway, a homicide here, suspects or witnesses for cases being killed before the police could come and question them, drugs still running rampant through places like The Narrows. Bruce was trying his best to keep the city afloat as Bruce Wayne and Batman, as well as dealing with the robbery, and now he had an injury from a gunshot to back it all up. Lovely. 

He was able to get into the GCPD database and began to look through old cases involving illegal weapons being bought and sold in the city. Maybe Zsasz didn’t buy it in the city, but if there was a group or node in the city that was part of that larger system, then he would gladly take it down and be satisfied. Bruce had to worry about the people of Gotham before he could worry about anyone else. 

Most of the people involved in the crimes that Bruce read about were either dead or had been shipped out to other prisons across the country. It was a mixed bag, some of them handled the business side, some simply fetched parts or helped keep the police and the general public from knowing what was happening right in their neighborhoods, and only a couple actually were weapon creators. Special bullets and barrel modifications made bullets even deadlier and more accurate. Sadly, all of these articles and reports were just based in Gotham. No one ever spilled their guts on where other groups were located outside of the city and across the coast and country. No one even admitted to there being any sort of black market for weapons. Every person who was caught either said that they were working alone, or only with the other people they’d been caught with. The police never found evidence of the groups reporting to a superior or working with anyone else, and due to the GCPD’s dark history, Bruce assumed that the higher-ups were quick to call the cases solved once people were put away. 

He had been scrolling for a good hour, reading more and more small print and bad handwriting, articles and police reports, until finally he had to sit back for a little bit and close his eyes. 

That’s when he dozed off to sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, hello, it is I, your friendly neighborhood fanfic writer who accidentally took a huge break from writing because he is a dumb and because video games are extremely fun to play! I want to thank all of you guys for being patient with me for these past few months and for reading this chapter, of course! I finally was able to sit down and decided "that's it, I'm finishing and posting today." And here we are!  
I'm not going to bother trying to tell you guys when the next chapter will be out, hopefully it'll be by the end of July if I can get my act together. I think that most of us can agree that 2020 so far has been interesting to say the least.  
As always, thanks for reading, guys. Any comments or kudos that you have, feel free to send my way. Just wanna chat or know more about my interests? Find me here on tumblr ( https://steveuschrist.tumblr.com/ ) or here on Twitter ( https://twitter.com/steveuschrist ) See you next chapter!

**Author's Note:**

> What started out as random ideas for Gotham season 5 2.0 has developed into a longer story that will string many different ideas together. Hopefully chapters will be roughly this length or longer, especially for certain plot lines that I already have in mind. If you're interested, drop a kudos and/or a comment to let me know what you think! There will be no No Man's Land in this story, and I promise if you're here for Wayleska it'll come in a few chapters. Just gotta lay down the groundwork for now. No idea how regularly I will be updating, hopefully once every 3 weeks at maximum, depending on what life throws at me. As always, thanks for reading, you guys!


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